Waiting Room

Living in the Before and After Times, I don't know.. Because the after never came, and after awhile I forgot there ever was a before

The Tree, The Flies, The Spiders, and Me

Today as I begin my 5th Spring living on this property in Wailuku, this week I’ve had an epiphany about one of my small parts in the ecological loop that is this backyard farm.

The land revolves around an Avocado tree of considerable size, and I’ve determined her age to be at least 70 years.

She is the Empress of the neighborhood, and when I first met her she immediately sealed the deal and rooted me to this ‘Aina. Knowing her potential and seeing her haggard condition due to the land being fallow for at least 5 years, I set about restoring her vitality and health by careful pruning, rot removal, and piling her fallen leaves around her roots as mulch and a super-compost.

I knew my future here depended upon her in some way, and 4 years later she is thriving, with an extended winter fruiting season that spans 5 months, and at it’s peak drops 30 huge Butter Avocados a day. This Spring she’s bursting out with more luscious bright green new growth than ever before, and I can really feel the love between us. How did we get here?

The land was long neglected and completely covered in crab spider webs when I arrived. Residents of Maui will be familiar with these armored rascals, spinning their webs faster and more prolifically than any other species I’ve seen. I don’t want to harm them as I go about my morning chores, and their hard, spiky exoskeletons make them almost indestructible anyway. This time of year the best you can do to give yourself, or any pollinator, a chance to enter the garden space is to brush the buggers off every surface with long-ass brooms as you go about your business. Their bite isn’t poisonous as they fall from the trees and into your clothes, but they are annoying.

I’ve found myself seeking a mischievous pleasure in knocking down their industries every morning, and as they scurry back up the stray strands of carnage, I joke to them out loud that I’m their ‘job security’. After all if I didn’t clear the air, there would be a daily massacre of the bees and butterflies who fly in to pollinate our beautiful flowers, and them I favor.

What I didn’t realize until recently, is that my clearing the air and tree branches of their daily crab spider blanket, is not only slowing down their coverage, it’s allowing a moment for another important process in my beloved Avocado tree.

The Crab Spiders only arrive one time a year. Halfway through the wet season and right before the Spring bloom they start breeding and covering the yard like a scene from Arachnophobia.. But they are only here in anticipation of another wave of insects. After the last Avocados drop in mid April the tree begins to be covered in small bud-like flowers. These in turn seem to attract a very specific species of blue-bottle like fly with large fuzzy orange eyes. These flies can be spotted in early spring (I saw one the other day!) but arrive in hordes as soon as Her Majesty is fully budding. They cluster around the flowers and sip the nectar from their tips, in turn ensuring the pollination of the tree.

They also provide a huge food source for the spiders, and that’s why they’re here too, it’s just that the spider population has been way out of balance here for awhile and the tree needed me to keep making longer sticks to my brooms and remain diligent about knocking ‘em down. Every year the flies come in larger numbers, the buds produce more nectar, the tree is pollinated more completely, and she grows more fruit and seeds for her reproduction, and food for us all.

It’s a good arrangement for everyone but the spiders, but they’ve had their turn at dominating, and they don’t seem to mind being knocked down a notch, as long as they can grumble, bite, and get back to work.

Love y'all!

-RG