It is about halfway through this tomato growing season, and all of my tomato plants are flowering! Their size has at least doubled in the last few weeks and each plant has needed to be rehomed in a bigger pot. With more space comes more growth, and I’ve had to set up tomato cages to hold up some of the heavier plants. There are 2 plants where all the flowers start to die almost immediately (boo), but 6 out of 8 plants are also bearing fruit, so there is much rejoicing! Because the tomatoes are all in pots and it’s hot out, I’ve needed to water them just about every day. The soil dries up so quickly, and unlike rosemary (who is THRIVING under the harsher conditions), the tomatoes do not love the blaze and lack of hydration. Hopefully with enough care and determination there will be many more tomatoes developing as the summer goes on.
In other garden news, I got some more rosemary because it’s doing so well with basically no effort on my part, and apparently it grows cool blue flowers that bees are supposed to like. I’m actually going to get a couple more types of blue/purple flowers this week because pollinators are supposedly most attracted to those colors. With any luck, more pollinators could shift all tomato plants into higher gear. I’m thinking I might also strategically place some different blue and purple things outside to really try and get their attention. Looking around, I don’t actually have that many blue and purple things…but for now I could at least tie some schnazzy juggling scarves around some of the tomato plants. Ideally, this plus some more enticing flowers will help bring thousands of bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds to visit daily. Or even just like 10 would be great.
There is also the possibility that some of the jumping spiders might finally become useful, because it turns out they are considered “incidental pollinators.” Basically, they have no intention of ever doing anything helpful and no sense of moral duty or any gratitude for the ones who raised them, but every once in a while, they might just happen to step on a flower and then jump onto another one while hunting…accidentally resulting in a pollinated flower. I feel like this is the least they can do for the effort I’ve put into giving them flies- because raising cultures of flies is actually disgusting. That is something I do now…and I cannot wait until the 3 baby spiders I kept (Moira, Nadja, and Lazlo, hatch date: April) are big enough to eat mealworms. What a simple and less gross life I will lead then, and it shouldn’t be too far away.
Or so I thought. Dimple’s 3rd egg sac has hatched and now I have probably around 50-70 more tiny baby spiders. And I don’t want them. I become immune to their cuteness when I think of maggots, which is unfortunately how all flies begin. Tiny baby jumping spiders can only eat tiny little flies that barely move, and the reptile store I go to carries flightless fruit flies that fit this bill. For efficiency, they sell a cheap container that has straw and some kind of food at the bottom (I don’t ask), and it starts with maybe 10-20 adult flies. Somehow it doesn’t smell and nothing can get out, and pretty quickly they start to reproduce. Eggs become larvae (maggots), which then become pupa (maggots in shells), which ultimately become adult flies (former maggots), who then reproduce and continue the whole cycle of maggotry over and over until all the food is gone. Their entire life cycle is 7-10 days, and the container seems to last about 4-5 weeks. On the plus side, it is self-sustaining and I don’t actually have to do anything. But I do have to look at them, and for me that is bad enough.
Even worse- Dimple looks like she is going to lay more eggs. It turns out, jumping spiders can store sperm and ultimately can lay up to 8 egg sacs after mating only a single time. What a terrible adaptation! Why did no one at the reptile store tell me this when I bought Dimple back in November for $20? (Side note- I guess that was a pretty good deal considering that 1 spider could potentially turn into like a thousand.) Sigh. What an unexpected adventure it’s been, this foray into class petdom. I’m pretty over having so many spiders to care for though, and I have decided that I’m going to free them all in my tomato plants to be Killer Guard Bugs soon…including Dimple. She has already repopulated plenty and I just don’t have the bandwidth to continue coparenting. I tried to reason with her about the implications of her endless egg laying, but she either can’t help it, doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care. She and her new babies (however many more there may be) can try to survive like other spiders do in the wild. I think Dimple knows I am planning a release party for them, because the last few days she’s been constantly standing guard on her nest and glaring at me. But anytime I begin to feel remorse, I look at a maggot and feel emboldened.
And I think I need to act fast- Dimple is quite rotund and once she lays the eggs they are really hard to move from the enclosure without causing damage. I don’t want to kill them (RIP egg sac #1, I didn’t know better), I just don’t want to be responsible for them. It is not going to be fun trying to move an angry Dimple out, but I know it is for the best, and then moving the baby spiders will be super easy. As long as I stay strong, by this time tomorrow, I will have but 3 small, celibate jumping spiders in my charge. Only then will I be able to see the light at the end of this maggoty tunnel. I’ll try to put Dimple et al. on tomato flowers and see if maybe they can at least help with pollination before inevitably abandoning their stations with cold indifference like my previous wave of KGB. Just like their namesake- ruthless.
When I think of my experiences- with gardening, spiders, and otherwise- sometimes the challenges stand out and I wonder if I am a glass half full kind of person. I’m not totally sure. Earlier this year I hurt my back, and I could barely move anything without pain except my arms. I’m pretty active and I was really frustrated, sad, and bored with the immobility and nonnegotiable need for rest. But despite taking roughly a year to get into and out of my car, and silently crying over speed bumps for weeks, I could still drive. This made work and therefore the funding of basic needs for my very slow-paced life possible. I researched arm-centered hobbies to channel my energy into because I couldn’t even sit without pain and was beginning to feel like I was in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This search resulted in learning to juggle, actually surprisingly well. At work I couldn’t do a lot of normal things like pass out papers to short people in my classroom, but when I delegated more tasks to my students, they stepped up and appreciated the trust. Eventually I even started moving around more easily than some of the senior citizens at physical therapy, all of whom had been putting me to shame in everything (besides hearing things and bowel control) for over a month.
I’m not sure if this indicates an outlook of “this glass is half full!” so much as “this glass is leaking…but I’m going to use it anyways!” Do I turn my lemons into lemonade? No, because literally none of them have ever made it to adulthood. But I keep caring for my tree, so maybe someday. Do I want a million baby jumping spiders? Definitely not, but here they are, so maybe they can at least pollinate some of my tomato flowers before adorably flying away on tiny spider-silk parachutes. I feel like if that’s not optimism, it’s at least optimist-leaning.