I'm new to St. Albert, this is my first spring living here. I began weeding and digging the earth in my yard to prepare for spring planting and I was a little puzzled by what I found in the dirt. What I found was virtually nothing.
Two days of digging unearthed a few ants, one beetle and approximately five worms but not the earthworms I recalled from my youth, the long wiggly ones. These were shorter and thicker and not very active. It rained hard the night before and afterward I walked the sidewalks and didn't see a worm, when I was a kid a rain seemed to produce a lot of earthworms on the sidewalk, some died and stayed on the sidewalk drying up and stiffening and flattening.
I'm not a scientist but I'm pretty sure earth worms are a good indicator of the health of an ecosystem, as are frogs and bees. I haven't seen any frogs and very few bees. As I watched a city worker spraying the boulevard the other day I noticed she was wearing a gas mask, glad she was protected but what about the rest of us fools who had left our masks at home. Why exactly are we spraying? If it’s to eliminate the pesky earthworm problems, in my opinion it seems to be working.
Carrie Saunders, St. Albert
