And Then There Were None...

Today's Wildflower Planting - September 15 2019

A solitary bee - Chapman's goldenrod

My first wife often made derogatory remarks about me going out to "stare" at my native plant garden. Fact is, I do that all the time - every day for as long as I can and still get some work done. It's what brings me joy and peace of mind - and more importantly, it has taught me a great deal about the plants I've been writing about these past 3+ decades here in Florida. Observations will always tell you more than books and the thoughts of "experts". 
With the development of my wildflower garden and the burst of flowers that have appeared over the past few weeks, these goldenrods and all the other wildflowers brought a huge number of pollinators to my front yard and an amazing diversity of species. It was a testament to the power of native plants and their ability to support life, even in the relatively sterile landscape of my new surroundings. Sometime in the past few days, however, all of that changed. My wildflower planting has once again become a sterile desert. The pollinators have disappeared and I am left with a beautiful set of wildflowers that are essentially doing nothing, but being attractive to me.
Over the past 3-4 days, the goldenrods that once had no fewer than 30 bees pollinating them at any one time have only been visited by a few lovebugs. Today as I watched again, I saw my first bee and it was alone as it worked the blooms.
This is a devastating setback and perplexing on all counts. I am home enough to know that none of my immediate neighbors have been visited by a pest control company to treat their lawns. Perhaps, while I slept one night this past week, the government came by with an aerial spray to treat my area for mosquitoes. I sleep soundly so such a thing could have occurred without my noticing it. No other explanation makes any sense to me.
The battle to preserve life on our planet, and especially life around the places we live in, is not as much a war against non-native plants as it is one waged against the wholesale use of pesticides. There is no doubt that pests, like mosquitoes, can carry diseases that could harm us, but is that risk any greater than the risk we cause by eliminating all the life of an area to reduce the chance of disease? The scenario of this non-targeted slaughter is repeated across the continent almost daily during the summer months when pollinators and the life that depends on them are most active and as development proceeds at the rapid rate it now occurs at, there are fewer and fewer safe harbors around us to repopulate the places we poison.
I have no data that my area of the world was recently sprayed, but it seems the only logical explanation. The annihilation of my pollinators - bees, wasps, butterflies and pollinating flies, occurred in less than 24 hours and it is complete. If we are to truly live on this planet, it seems we need a better way to do so. Eliminating lawns and replacing them with pollinator-friendly plants is only effective if we then leave these landscapes alone.
I will continue to go outside to stare at my plants, but I expect that it will take some time for things to recover. I do not live next to a safe house - a natural area that might have been spared whatever was done to my neighborhood. Perhaps, as a species, we are not the intelligent beings we make ourselves out to be.