For you
Bugs the trio, ecosystem, lettings things be, and I miss my dog
Whenever I see something, anything that visits me or looks at me in a remotely memorable way, I would wonder “Is that you, Dara? Have you reincarnated?” Then I would calculate the time. “No, this puppy’s too young”. I believe and feel her spirit with me, but I can’t help but to miss all the physicalities we used to share. Just a day more, one full day, so we could do things that Dara loves. One of the many “Is that you?”s is the bug mentioned in the previous Just writing post. I still don’t know the name of these guys. Initially for a number of weeks I thought they were pollen beetles, but on closer and frequent inspection, they don’t seem to be.
For many weeks there was just one bug (I have named him and his fellows “Bugs” with their pronoun being it/him), then suddenly there were three that I wondered if I had it wrong all this time, then there were five, and by then I had realised that more were arriving. It wasn't a trick of the eye. I don’t know how though - whether these are their offsprings that have hatched in recent weeks, or whether they have called for their group, or whether they are all attracted to the same thing - my clotted cream jasmine plant. I would check on the bug each day when it was just one bug then more intently when there were three to see whether they would get on or fight. It was the former. The trio would stay nearby and at times on the same flower or stem. At such close range they would run around at the speed never witnessed before. Given their anatomy, I knew they could fly, but didn’t catch them doing so as mostly they liked chilling at the exterior of a flower bud or a blossomed one, and would walk to a new destination. Eventually I saw them flying for safety when the jasmine plant was rustled too much for their liking, or when calculating to move onto a different stem - this seemed very precise and taken with caution, despite the ability to fly, the bug was angling himself in various ways with hesitancy before taking the fly-jump.
When there were up to three, I was careful about approaching my jasmine even when it needed deadheading in fears of disrupting their peace. They weren’t just guests or visitors to the plant, it was theirs, it was their home, their habitat. But when five or more happened, my patience was reached. I would swat at their direction to get them to fly away when I needed to get closer to the plant, and stopped checking to see their whereabouts beforehand. Would I end up with a whole colony in a couple of weeks? I wondered. If only they ate aphids I thought, these guys seemed to be nectar and pollen feeders. What I needed and would serve as VIPs to my plants were and are ladybirds to aid with the rampage of aphids. To note, my jasmine is thankfully and surprisingly aphid-free, but there are some who are not. Whoever said that onion and garlic plants would be aphid deterrents please? Because they have become more like aphid mining grounds. But these mysterious dark backed with slight crimson patterns at the tip and green underbelly bugs took a liking to my jasmine.
