Jean Ryan1 Comment

A Frugal Life

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This is my air plant, specifically Tillandsia bulbosa, native to Belize and Guatemala. The twisted branches fascinate me, the way they seem to be searching the air for something, anything, to live on: rainwater, leaf debris, bird droppings, dust. These are not needy plants. Weeks of neglect will leach their color and turn them spongy, but after a long soak in a bowl of tap water, they are firm and strong again. They can even do without their tuft of roots, which only serve as an anchor. Everything they need is absorbed through the suction scales that line their branches. Day and night, these plants are ready, accepting whatever windfalls come their way. If drought occurs, they simply shrink and wait.

Spanish moss, another type of Tillandsia, doesn’t bother with roots. It just drapes itself over a limb and hangs there, resisting nothing. Rain washes the nutrients off the leaves of the tree, and the moss catches this nourishing rainwater in its tiny cupped scales. Like the canary in the coal mine, Spanish moss is so proficient at absorbing elements that analysis of local specimens can reveal the extent of metallic pollution.

Bulbosas bloom just once before dying, but as their rainbow flowers emerge, they send out “pups,” baby plants attached to the mother’s base. In a year’s time, these new plants have plants of their own, and so the clumps can grow large and luxurious, the living and the dying in perfect accord.

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Willing. Resourceful. Irrepressible. I’m learning a lot from this plant.

Jean Ryan10 Comments

Accountable

This is an excerpt from a forthcoming short story on the ways in which people intersect with nature, with unexpected results.

This morning I was having coffee on the deck when I noticed a spider web, about the width of a grapefruit, strung up between two of my potted vegetable plants. Three minute strands stretched from either side, anchoring a tightly rigged web of breathless perfection, each miniscule partition exactly the same. Sitting in the middle of the web was an auburn spider the size of a pea. If the light had come from a slightly different angle, if I had not been looking that way at that instant, I would have missed him altogether and my world would be unchanged.

Nothing had flown into this web, at least not recently, and I wondered if the spider was hungry and how long he went between meals, and if every web he made was this exquisite, and if they were all productive or if some webs proved worthless, and if a spider could become disheartened. A tiny movement on the periphery turned my attention to another bug, a green beetle with black stripes crawling out of a yellow cucumber flower. Knowing these beetles are trouble, I plucked it from the plant and held it between my thumb and forefinger, regarding the waving twin hairs of its antennae and the tiny hooked feet. It was nearly the size of the spider, and I thought what a feast it would be. I looked from one to the other. Here was the problem, here the solution. I could help a beneficial species and practice organic pest control at the same time.

Still, I had to get up the nerve to toss the beetle at the web; I was half hoping it would bounce off. It didn’t. It stuck fast. In a blink, the spider shot down the web, seized the poor thing and stilled it just like that. Expertly, rapidly, the spider then began wrapping the carcass, enfolding it in sticky strands. In less than ten seconds the beetle was a white mummy, and the spider, more leisurely this time, returned to the center of its web.

I’ve crushed more than few troublesome bugs under my shoe, and I’m not sure why this death was so disturbing. Maybe because I trespassed, bullied my way into a place not designed for me, used another innocent creature to do my dirty work. How can I apologize? God was the only witness.