t started to lean one day and I had to chain saw it down to keep it from falling into the house. I also watched that seed stalk go through its cycle and die. And before you know it hey have a 20-30 foot tree with seed pods sprouting up into the air. They grow several inches per day, which means you can almost see them grow. I watched one of these agave trees spring up from seemingly nowhere. In any case, in the last year I have seen four of these monsters bloom, so I assume we are at that stage in their lifecycle for at least the largest of these plants. This house was built about twenty-three years ago and while the succulent and cactus gardens were planted about ten to fifteen years ago, I am sure there were agaves here long before there was a house. They notably only bloom once in their lives and it occurred most often in about 15-20 years once they are of a fairly grand size. They grow almost anywhere, in between rocks, in sandy soil and in the middle of nowhere.

Who knew these plants were all related? The great big blue-toned ones in my yard are Agave Americana or American Century plants and these buggers can get very very big. The grouping is so broad that it encompasses all the usual grains (rice, wheat, corn, etc.) and sugar cane, palms, bamboo, pineapples, onions and daffodils. That seems funny because when i think of agaves, I think of multileafed plants, but then I am not a biologist and taxonomist. This is a very broad group that is characterized by its seeds having one broad leaf.

These plants are part of a grouping called monocots, which are the most significant form of biomass on the planet. These common desert plants are quite plentiful around here and I probably have several hundred on my property of varying species. As Steve Martin might have said in My Blue Heaven, “It’s not optimism I believe in, its over-optimism.” But none of that stops me from having moments of deeper reflection and the realization that try as a I might to spread sunshine about the future, there are forces of nature that often prevail to keep us here on earth, struggling to make ends meet. I don’t take offense at either of those characterizations because I believe that one of the most productive places to be in life is in the land of optimism. I have been accused many times in life of being too optimistic and a bit of either a Pollyanna or cheerleader. We all have our mood swings and I guess I express my through my writing. One of my friends who reads this blog regularly just emailed me that while he enjoyed the story of the day and found lots of new and interesting references, he was not uplifted by the story because its theme was one of the reality of the human condition.

The circle of life