In the 28 years that we've been in this area (Western North Carolina) I have never seen fewer insects. Each year we have fewer and fewer. It is very discouraging.
That's why I was completely delighted to hear the buzzing of lots of honey bees feeding at my volunteer cleomes, which come up year after year, as long as I don't use any pre-emergent weed killer.
Most of the residents in my community use lawn services that put down all sorts of pesticides and weed killes and they of course are largely responsible for the diminution of the insect population.
On July 10th I had a DMEK cornea transplant on my right eye, fortunately not my camera eye and I was happy to be able to capture this with my "good" eye. Going through this procedure is not only scary but also extremely frustrating because it can take several weeks for the vision to come back. While my vision is slowly improving I can see that I should be happy to opted for the procedure, which I had decided upon because it was becoming harder and harder to see to drive. Colors are more intense and blacks are blacker. I am encouraged.
When I decide to have a transplant on my camera eye I am going to being doubly scared but hopeful that my vision improves as that of my "bad" eye, which I did first.
The surgery was necessitated because I have Fuchs Dystrophy, a condition with which the pumps in one's cornea stop working, and vision gets more and more cloudy, contrast fails, and there are huge starbursts of points of contrast such as sun reflecting off cars, headlights, Christmas lights, etc. Not a good condition for an avid photographer.