Todd Pitt

This morning I went to check on the herbs in our little garden and I was expecting our remaining dream come true rose to be dead or as holy as Swiss cheese. Last weekend I saw that the first of our dreams had popped open…but I also noticed that a gang of aphids had set up shop to destroy our roses. Last year the dreams were stunning, this year they were looking to be a total bust. I had been so busy with ZS that I completely forgot to trim them and also we don’t have any good garden sheers.

When I reached up (about six feet) to pull down the remaining rose and I was surprised. Nothing!!! The rose was completely clean, in full bloom and fantastically fragrant. So where the heck did the gang of aphids go? I peered closer at the stem and was amazed by what I found. An entire war had occurred during the week while I had been sorting ones and zeros. You see, earlier in the spring an band of tiny spiders had invaded our balcony, setting up small webs everywhere. I was annoyed cause I kept running into webs and also want it to be safe for our kids to go out on the balcony to blow bubbles. But our eight legged friends turned out to be the good guys in the insect holocaust that happened on the rose stem.

I examined the narrow green battlefield of a stem and it was littered with hollowed aphid carcases. The band of micro-arachnids had setup a strategic line just below the dream and had slaughtered all of the aphids attempting to asend to the petals to catch a free meal. It was a moment of awe, the subtle differences between reality and the realities we think we know. Microcosms. Epic battles in the hidden worlds beneath. It reminded me of a beautiful piece of french cinema. I wish I had tiny fly-on-the-wall cameras set up so I could see how it went down.

The spiders saved my last dream. It made my day, perhaps my summer. I love coming home after too many hours in front of the social light box and just enjoying my dreams. I try to re-route myself, channel myself, my mind into simplicity of everyday things…things that just are. To me, it is beauty.