A slow day at the greenhouse
Just before dawn, the grey Toyota truck, with its headlights
extinguished, coasted discreetly into the gravel covered driveway. The
driver, a tall rogueish figure with steely eyes, stepped out and scanned
the neighboring houses on this sleepy residential backroad. He was
relieved that no windows were yet lit. The white bungalow he was
visiting was almost hidden beneath the vines and shrubs that grew
profusely over its walls, obscuring the windows and much of the front
door screen. An occasional native cactus or agave poked through the
tall grasses and tumbleweeds, all surrounding the introduced mulberry
tree towering in the center of the yard. Hanging from this tree was an
assortment of pots holding rare and exotic plants. Although the man
moved with the stealth and confidence of a dangerous predator, he was
cautious and tense. He turned to his car and softly called to the
shadow moving inside.
"Hans! Come on!"
A massive yellow hound bounded out, muscles rippling just beneath its
rich coat. With his black trenchcoat flapping in the desert's morning
wind, the man quickly led his mighty beast through the tall gate in the
privacy fence that surrounded the house's back yard. Once through the
fence he allowed himself to relax. The two had hardly circled to the
back when a door opened and a towering giant of a man stepped out to
meet them.
"Barry! How are you, man! I see you brought the dog. Good, he may be
of help."
"Yes, I figured I should, considering the trouble we got into last
time. Paul, I'm sorry I'm late. I suppose we should just get
started."
"Don't worry about it, we'll get to them soon enough. They can wait.
And anyway, you know that it would be impossible for me to survive the
morning without my coffee."
Barry laughed and jovially slapped Paul on the back with a blow that
would have brought an ox to the ground--Paul barely flinched, "Well,
let's get you your caffeine then, monster!"
The two disappeared into the house. The dog remained in the yard and
ranged around the enclosure, keeping a distance from the electrified
chain link fence circling the buildings. Outside this, the tall wooden
privacy fence and an assortment of dense trees and shrubs on the
property lines formed the next line of defense. With the addition of
his new privacy fence, the greenhouse was no longer even visible off his
property, A large gambrel roofed greenhouse, flanked by a small shed,
stood in the center of the yard. The greenhouse was glazed with
translucent corregated lexan siding, so from the outside the inhabitants
of the building were blurred into amorphous green shapes. A unique
feature of the building was that the walls and roof were enclosed by an
unbreachable network of strong iron security bars. When he installed
these bars, Paul explained to inquisitive neighbors that he often worked
with hybridizing rare and expensive orchids, and that one could not be
too careful about security. Since no one other than he and Barry ever
went in, his explanation had never been questioned. Both shed and
greenhouse were padlocked and armed with several redundant security
systems.
After a light breakfast, the two stepped back into the yard. Paul's
sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, exposing his heavily muscled
forearms. Barry's jacket was off, and his tall lean figure was revealed
to be bristling with thick muscles and steely tendons. Paul slapped him
heavily on his back laughing, "So that's how you got in this business?
For a woman, eh? Well, I'm sure she must have been a beauty! Good
thing for her that she left you while she could!"
"What?" Barry bellowed out, "I could have your head for saying lesser
things!" Paul looked at his burly friend carefully, but then saw the
twinkle in his eye. Barry met his gaze with a smile and added, "But
fighting friends is not why I'm here. So, let's get started."
Paul unlocked the shed, and pulled out their equipment. Over his
clothes, Barry put on a layer of padding, then plastic armour, and
finally his enzyme-resistent environment suit. The suit had a six inch
wide steel band that encircled his waist. Once it was in place, he put
on his tools. Highly magnetized, they adhered firmly to the metal belt.
Completely assembled, the weight of his heavy protective gear would have
been impossible for a lesser man to bear, but Barry's vast muscles were
not even slowed. Paul's suit was similar, but had been personalized to
"suit his whims," as he would often tell Barry. Barry thought it was
amusing, but had mixed feelings about the usefulness of the black cape.
Still, he thought, since the costume was extremely faithful to the
original, the cape was necessary.
"Ready, Paul?"
Paul slowly turned his hulking seven foot frame to Barry, eyes hidden
behind the black protective mask. He answered, his voice
rumbling deep and heavy in the helmet like distant thunder,
"I am ready. Join me, Barry. Join the Dark Side"
Barry smiled grimly, "Well, let's go."
Inside the greenhouse, the two stayed close together. The first several
benches were well under control. The Dionaea were safely tucked
away in neatly spaced spaced 15 cm pots. As they walked down the
aisles, Paul plucked out a few weeds, while Barry isolated a few
specimens that were becoming too large to be kept among the small
plants. Barry called to Paul, "The VFTs look pretty good. I'll
put these big ones over on the other benches." The next room had some
seedlings and cuttings. When the plants were this small, they were
never any problem, but still needed careful tending to avoid
overcrowding which always brought the worst out in a plant. Paul pulled
a few inferior seedlings out of one overplanted pot, and could feel them
wriggle even through his gloves--more refuse for the incinerator.
"Come on Barry, we've finished up in here for now. Let's spend our
energies where they're needed."
When Barry met him at the riveted steel portal that sealed off the next
room, Paul was already studying the floor plan on the wall.
They both knew it well, but needed to finalize their strategy.
"I think that we ought to strike here, with the Drosera. All of
the sundews are totally out of hand. You saw how they were massing last
time. I think that while we were cleaning out the pitcher plants, they
were only sizing us up. The Drosera binata's are going to give us
our most trouble."
Barry considered Paul's words. "I'm afraid that I have to agree with
you. The binata var. dichotoma's are really what have me
worried, though." He paused, "The usual, then? I'll separate and
you'll prune?"
Paul nodded. Barry flipped down his face visor and switched his helmet
to radio contact. The two exchanged a tense glance and unlocked the
doorway. The gas jets lining the door automatically lit, insuring that
that nothing could get through the door without bursting into flame.
Paul swung the door open, and the two jumped into the humid chamber
beyond, the tongues of fire from the gas jets licking at their flame
resistent suits. The air was thick with humidity and the smells of
soil, plants and nectar. Barry looked around. The disarray was
incredible. Huge plants, grossly overgrown in their pots, towered to
the ceiling. Deadly lowland Nepenthes species vined around the
rafters and crawled down the walls to coil and uncoil near their feet.
Enormous, unidentified Sarracenia hybrids swayed in their pots,
flexing their rhizomes in meat-hungry anticipation. The walls of the
entire room were completely obscured by growth, and in places vision
was limited to only a few feet because of the twining array of
dangerous plants. The two men ran down an aisle, barely discernable in
the jungle, jumping over snapping Cephalotus and
Darlingtonia ground runners to get to the sundew section. As soon as
they were there, Barry ran to a great four foot tall mound of mossy
growth, and began to tear into the Sphagnum with his mighty fists
of iron. Meanwhile, Paul kept the more ravenous and aggressive sundew
species at bay with lightning-fast sweeps of his modified cattle-prod.
Several inches into the moss Barry encountered some old rotting pots,
and beneath that he found the bench. A few minutes later, he had
exposed a length of tabletop several feet long. They paused, and then
turned to the sundews. Barry carefully approached the closest plant, a
medium sized clump of filiformis var. filiformis. The plant sensed
his approach, and its questing leaf-blades extended their full five
feet towards him. "Be careful, Barry, it looks like it may be ready
to flower. You know how they get then."
Barry's eye's narrowed to slits like those of a snake, and he looked for
an opening. Distracting the plant with his pike, he coolly snatched the
plant's pot off the ground. As the pot lifted out of the moss, he heard
a strange tearing noise but paid it no heed. He held the pot towards
his lusty companion who trimmed the dead growth. Paul then yanked out a
few weeds and broke the pot in half with a blow from his hammer. The
two grabbed opposite sides of the root ball and pulled--with a mighty
tear, the plant cleaved in two. Paul pruned slightly, repotted the
humbled plants in two small tubs, and put them on the cleared bench. As
a final touch, he bolted the tubs firmly onto the moist and dripping
tabletop--two plants completed. While Paul was working on these
plants, Barry stood guard against a field of erect tuberous
Drosera which had suddenly sprung up nearby. The plants had sensed
their footfalls and had popped out of dormancy in hopes of a warm meal.
An emerging D. lowriei rosette joined the fray. Not spying this
bloodthirsty carnivore, Barry trod on the slick plant and slipped
headlong into a thick mound of Sphagnum. Paul hooted in laughter
as his furious and cursing friend pulled himself out, covered with bits
of moss and leaves, "Laugh all you want! Where's that damned plant?"
Barry strode to the D. lowriei and tried to grind it underfoot,
but the plant quickly zipped back underground like a frightened
earthworm. Barry roared in fury and frustration, "Send that thing back
to Allen in Australia, hidden in a box of Vegemite!" Paul continued to
chuckle at his friend's antics until Barry glanced at him, "And enough
from you! Or do I have to put more Aldrovanda in your bathtub?"
Paul quieted quickly, and then changed the subject.
"Well Barry, it looks like that's the end of the filiformis.
It's Drosera binata for a while. A whole witch's brew of
subspecies, too." He considered the bedewed mass of long tendrils
swaying before him. As far as he could see in the dense growth, he
spied out binatas, dichotomas, and even a dreaded multifida
f. extrema. The branches were two to three feet long, as thick as his
thumb, and covered with short stalks which held glistening globs of
adhesive mucus. Once caught in that deadly embrace, the digestive
glands would not be far off. Even his environment suit couldn't stand a
direct assault for long.
"Yeah, Paul, it looks bad. Above all, stay away from the
extrema's. Move out!"
Barry chose his next quarry. It was a fair sized D. binata "T
form" close against the others. He reached out and pulled the pot away.
Again he heard the strange tearing sound, but this time, he saw its
origin. The tough roots from the plants had all grown together into
each other's pots! Fear coursed through his veins.
"Oh my god, Paul, they've grown together! Who knows what they might do
coordinated like this!" He turned to his comrade just in time to see
the soil erupt at Paul's feet. Paul was pulled down, a mass of shoots
coiling around his legs. A large Drosera capensis "narrow leaf"
toppled onto him, slapping its long, oar shaped leaf blades around his
torso, pinning his arms to his sides and covering his face plate. Paul
thrashed about blindly on the floor, in an effort to damage the plant's
woody stem, but together the plants were an easy match even for his
titanic strength. In the same instant, all of the nearby binatas
whipped tendrils around Barry, and he was quickly covered by the slimy
growth.
With both men conscious but subdued, the plants began to constrict their
prey. Barry felt his armour collapsing under the tremendous pressure.
Paul lost sensation in his legs as ground runners coiled ever tighter.
An acrid smell filled the air as digestive enzymes sizzled into their
clothing.
Barry fought against the pressure on his massive chest for some air, and
forced out some hoarse words, "Paul, can you move?" He paused and
waited for a response. "Paul?" Faintly he could hear his
warrior-friend's voice whispering over the crackling headset, but the
acids from a Drosera intermedia gripping his helmet had done too
much damage to the circuitry for Barry to be able to understand him. He
realized that Paul couldn't help him, and that they were both completely
helpless. He resigned himself to his cruel fate.
Suddenly Barry felt a heavy impact in his side as a large flaming mass
of ravening tooth and fur ran into the writhing crowd of plants that
held him helpless. He looked over and saw that Hans had run in through
the flaming door to help them. The dog's fur was burning in only a few
spots, for he was covered with some sort of fluid that kept him from
bursting completely aflame. The plants recoiled from the flames and
dropped Barry heavily to the ground. The flames on the dog soon burnt
out, but still the plants mysteriously recoiled from Hans's touch! The
vicious canine jumped upon the bound figure of Paul and began rolling
upon the D. capensis which held him, which inexplicably
shrivelled and browned and loosened its hold. Hans then set his
powerful slavering jaws to rending through the roots binding Paul's
feet, and finally freed him. The two, guided by the brave dog, crawled
through the wildly overgrown rooms towards the exit. Although the
plants tried to harass the men, they were kept at bay, strangely
repulsed by the rugged canine--even the tick-sized gemmae trying to
burrow into his coat shrivelled and died. Finally the three exhausted
crusaders reached the door, pausing only to turn off the gas flames to
allow the dog to pass unscathed. In the relative safety of the
Dionaea room, Barry noticed that several bottles of concentrated
herbicide had been chewed open and emptied, and looked with
understanding at his dripping, plant-repellent dog.
A few hours later, Paul and Barry were relaxing in the yard, watching
Hans teasing an annoyed and hissing Darlingtonia. They were back
in their street clothes, and Barry enjoyed the rays of the Arizonan sun
playing across his handsome face. On the glass table was a medium sized
box, already addressed to Australia. The phone rang, it was Barry's
wife.
"Yeah, I'll be heading home in about forty-five minutes.
Yeah, I've got the dog. OK, I'll tell him." He put his hand over the
mouthpiece, "She says hi, Paul." Paul waved tiredly. "Yeah, he
says hi. What did we do today? Not much really, just the usual stuff,
wouldn't you say so, Paul? We just puttered around." He continued to
talk to his wife, and Paul leaned back, stretching his tired and knotted
muscles. Yes, he answered quietly to himself as he sipped his coke,
just puttered around.