Conventional Wisdom

It's just a dead stick that used to be the flower stalk of an aloe vera.  It neither promises future flowers, nor reminds anyone of past flowers.  It's just a dead stick, white and brittle.  It's been standing right there, in the middle of my garden, for more than half a year.  Once it held up flaming orange candles of flowers.  Now it's just a stick.  A dead stick.

Conventional Wisdom cries out, "Cut it off!  Throw it away!  It serves no purpose!"

Anyone who ventures out onto the patio can - no, must - see it standing forlornly out there, across the little lawn, in front of the pool, in a rock-framed planting bed.  Conventional Wisdom says that sheer laziness is the only reason to leave it there.  It's a dead stick.

Conventional Wisdom so closely scrutinizes its garden calendar, so carefully studies its rules of landscape maintenance, that it only sees a dead stick that needs removal.  And so, Conventional Wisdom never sees the dragonflies that frequently rest upon the tip of that spent flower stalk.  The dead stick that becomes a throne for kings and queens of the air, garbed in irridescent armor.  The dead stick that serves as a vantage point from which to spot prey.  And predators.

Conventional Wisdom asserts that the dragonflies (the ones it has never seen) would find another place to rest if the dead stick were removed.  Yes, they probably would.

But, because the dead stick stands in such a place of prominence, anyone who ventures out onto the patio can - no, must - occasionally consider these sparkling regents of the insect kingdom resting almost weightlessly on their dead-stick throne.  Conventional Wisdom's plan would only allow us to catch a vague glimpse of them as, on gossamer wings, they pass over one garden that is free of dead sticks, searching for another that welcomes them with a simple luxury that invites them to rest their regal bodies.

In my garden, as in Conventional Wisdom's, dragonflies are as welcome as dead sticks.  The question is, how warm is the welcome?