The Creatures in my Greenhouse March for Australia
The aphids on his artichoke are congregating at the base of the bulb.
I listen to the recording again. “At first sign of aphids, deploy the Romia sequence in natural removal. Listen to recording file Romia 1 for instructions.”
With a pen to guide my vision, I attempt to count the endless colony. Their translucent bloated bodies clone one another; tiny mouth piercing, sap-sucking creatures operating with a collective mind.
“Remember haste is key! We don’t have the luxury of using chemical controls.” Tao Kwong’s clear resounding baritone asserts his long dedication to perfect results, unskewed by any unaccounted variables. “When aphids give birth, the live young are already pregnant with a developing embryo. They have a headstart on you, so make sure you act fast.”
In the end his dedication was wasted, after all his remaining artichoke specimens were thrown into the lab waste container only a day after he passed. Lab error, they said without much apology. “Sorry, they just looked the same as Sunny’s”, who was actually growing a new variety of buffalo grass.
I rescued the artichoke out from the laneway bin. I foraged feverishly through the coffin-like sticky steel oven, finding it just a moment before the council trash collection came. I took the plant home with me for safekeeping. Hope he doesn’t mind a touch of bin syrup variables.
It’s my first time getting through the audio files he left me. The first dozen times I tried, his voice folded me. My kneecaps had smacked concrete pavers of the greenhouse, rushed by the unexpected burn of grief skewering through my chest. I laid on my side for hours, cheek on gravel, flailing helplessly, gutted by the parody of flowing life mimicked in my ears. The reminder stark against a world in which I could no longer see him.
Today it feels like a cheap trick to click play and run my practised sob for him. I press away any stray tears. Is this tragedy porn? It’s fake to sensationalise Tao’s tragedy to get a hit from the heightened emotional pain. Does it make me feel that I’m mourning him enough? To whom does the measure of my grief matter anyways? Do I think he can see me?
It is of course my luck that the recorded entry for Romia 1 is a corrupted file, unretrievable. The glass slider concealing an aphid sample cracks in my palm.
The information is lost. For a moment, I imagine the knowledge stays with Tao, his calm hands folded over his resting body and the information glows somewhere metaphysically within him. For a moment the daydream warms a smile to my leadened face before I’m brought back to the nasty infestation of aphids staring back at me from my makeshift backyard climate-mod-dome.
The aphids are congregating at the base of the bulb of his last crop of artichoke. It’s the first successful Cynara cardunculus of the gigantea scolymus variety to have ever made it past the seedling phase and form a bulb. Its fluorescent coral-like purple flower is estimated to reach over forty-five centimeters in diameter.
Relentless colonies of them block ant trails, outside I see them taking over entire parks. There must be a problem with them in my community. I watch from above, a god-eye perspective in gardening gloves, and press one flat with my thumb. It leaves behind an invisible smear. By dusk, a hundred more appear in its place, obedient, identical and multiplying in faith. Undeterred.
With each day I watch them become more and more brazen. They pierce the veins and drink without shame, their bodies swelling with what they’ve taken. I press at them helplessly as they take over a new section of my greenhouse, claiming the delicate new growth of my long stemmed roses. Though some might argue that the roses had it coming, blaming their lack of resistance, too fragrant, too passive, too much.
The collective sound of them picking a wound seeps into my home with the chill of a draft. A wet static of unchecked satisfaction drowns out the night, a continuous activation of my sympathetic nervous system. I press my eyes shut, attempting to push down the cortisol spike rushing through me. But the very thought that these aphids are lurking in my neighborhood, surrounding my home, conspiring against my very existence, wears on my mind… Did I lock the bedroom windows closed? Will I wake up to them climbing in through the sill? Can you ever get them out if they drill into your eardrums? … A feeling that never leaves, only compounds like pressure locking my jaw. I can hear their clicking slurps when I close my eyes. Hundreds and thousands of them in my ears like tinnitus, each the pinching sound of incisors sinking into the veins of helpless flowers.
In my mind I’m in a place surrounded by tiny aphids and dead lifeless plant matter. Locked in with dense volumes of their dotted outlines crawling over one another, tickling the edges of my irises. Though I struggle to see beyond the scratching blur, I have the familiar sense of laying just inches above my mattress, the skittling insects separating me from its comfort. The weight of them presses down upon my throat, and onto my collarbones so that my once horizontal body tips backwards and the blood drains from my toes. My chin is crushed against my chest and the cells in my face bloom red. When I gasp a breath, the aphids fill my lungs like specks of glass, clawing on their way out in the wrong direction. They’ve taken over my home, body and mind. Somewhere in the distance overhead, Tao watches me struggle. The tiny colonisers intimidate with a thousand microscopic cuts until the cavity in my chest gives out, bursting with sticky honey-like blood. That night they feast on my deep river of blood, dancing in the pulsating rhythm of my waning heart.
Each morning I find new damage—leaves yellowed, stalks collapsing under the weight of their feeding. My garden used to be a sanctuary, the one place I could thrive without permission. Now it’s overrun, conquered by things too small to reason with. No matter the debate or constructive thought, they stomp down on my peace, unhearing to my pleas. They survive off the destruction of the individual plant, but like me, my flowers were sowed here in this garden beyond circumstantial control. Only hoping to grow, making the most of the sunshine and rain that comes our way.
They see the scatter of the diasporic seed like a weed to be eradicated. Unfortunately for the colourful flowers in this world there is no escaping the vile nature of aphids. There’s no place where we might go about our day uninterrupted by the heavy throttle of their aggression.
Today, I’ve decided to end their reign. It’s been four days since Tao’s attack. On the morning news, the chief inspector proudly reported that they cannot confirm that it was racially motivated and therefore it should not be treated as such.
I begin by spraying the artichoke with round-up. I follow the bottle’s instructions, carefully using gloves to avoid any possible skin contact. I sit watching its withering decay, waiting for poison to absorb on contact until it burns the plant from its core.
Its limp blackened shape wavers on the garden bed at my feet, like a shadow trembling under lamplight on a lonely night.
It’s dead.
The prolonged feeling of smothering defeatism is silenced by its complete and final end. All at once, a tiny breath of release triggers my body forward. I thrash at the bottle of glyphosate until the lid no longer contains the liquid in, freeing it of its post. I splash the cloudy liquid, drenching the roses that have lined my home from my earliest memories.
I wash all the thriving green in my garden with its stinging burn!
I don’t stop at the mailbox. I run onto the street barefoot, armed with more bottles! Every Australian flag marks my pitstop; I twirl around on perfectly manicured lawns as droplets cascade like the circular motions of sprinklers. I pump the glyphosate into the letterbox mouths of homes, praying for their cancerous effects to take control.
There’s a particular house I’ve been saving for my last two bottles. I climb over their perfect picket fence punctuated with little flags hung from every post. I pass their English-box hedges and the federation styled facade, leaving it untouched. Its fierce front entry is strong-armed by a whale-length Australian flag that has swept from its pole since the end of August. I pound heavy feet, rounding to the hidden side-path and towards the ugly ducted AC unit. I unload a whole bottle, spraying it straight into its sucking fan! Ha-HA! Next, I grapple at the unit until I’m stood atop of it and reach over to the potable drinking tank beside it. I spill a little when I pour, unable to hold down the giggles fizzing out.
“SSssssshhhh! Stop it!” I exclaim with twinkling glee. A stir from within the house signals my cue to leave. I walk out the way I came in, but with newfound balance and steadiness in my stride. For now, I go home and rest.
Tomorrow, there’s more to be done.
Designed by Portia Love