Salutary Neglect (Or "To a Spider")

Today I saw that my tomato plant in the front yard, a variety called "Golden Pear" (the photo of the fruit at left should corroborate the appropriateness of its name) is actually doing very well, despite months of (apparently salutary) neglect. Ditto for the eggplant (called "White Crescent," photo below at right.) Though fully cognizant of historical precedent, I have decided to bring this period of salutary neglect to a close, albeit without the introduction of a Stamp or Sugar Act; hopefully this increase in attentiveness will not be met with open rebellion or revolution from the garden.

Although the plants have flourished in terms of fruit production under the regime of neglect, close inspection of the eggplant leaves revealed that it has been beset by pests (from the looks of things, flea beetles). At first glance, the tomato plant seemed pest-free, but its prodigious growth has lent it a jungle-like appearance that masks insect damage, and makes assessment of its true health a little difficult.

In fact, closer examination of the Golden Pear revealed that it has been besieged by a host of locusts, dozens and dozens of small- to medium- sized grasshoppers who are destroying fruit and foliage alike. O_o

Needless to say, I went on a grasshopper killing rampage: with one hand I grasped a plastic jar, into which I deposited the little fiends one by one after snatching them with my free hand. I will allow them to bake in the sun as they lament their iniquity. On a clear, sunny day such as today, it shouldn't take more than a few hours to render them lifeless.

In my jubilee of insecticide, I noticed a large brown spider who had made her web between the needles of the Japanese pine that decorates our front landscaping. I considered what a waste it is kill all these grasshoppers when the spider's belly would make a perfectly good repository for them. From the tomato plant I plucked one smallish insect (anything too large might escape the web, kick the spider, or sport a thick exoskeleton that would prove inpenetrable to the spider's fangs). This felicity of this arrangment pleased me so much that I decided to make my feeding the spider a morning ritual, and to compose the following little poem:

To a Spider

O spider, spider, you alone
Doth sit upon your silken throne.
While feckless others hop or crawl,
You nimbly spin your doily-wall.

With luck, you'll labor not in vain:
Regaling insects for your pain.
Your dinner knife to them's the Sword:
When they taste death, you taste reward!

But still you've got no guarantee
Of dinner, for some escapee
Just might abscond and thwart your plan—
There go the schemes of mouse and man!

And so your work for naught won't be,
I'll bring you dinner—it's on me!
So from my yard I'll pluck a pest,
And drop him in your silken nest.

Now greet your guest, this pesky bug:
Embrace him in your eight-armed-hug.
Though he's unhappy, we three have glee:
The garden plants, and you, and me!