Gosh, it’s really too bad the girls still have the digital camera on vacation with them. Consider yourself lucky. Without a camera, you are spared don’t get to see the plant carnage what happened during the last four days.

Lizzy is housesitting on a lake in Vermont. The owner invited the whole fam to come over and enjoy the lake. So we did. I swam, kayaked, and read trashy books. I did not think about insects. Sadly, they thought about the 24 hour a day buffet at the farm. Would it be an exaggeration to say that every bug on the planet visited Green Hope Farm for a meal during these four days? I think not.

The spiral of Mehera Marigolds? Well, it’s hard to tell what kind of plants they were, let alone that they were planted in a spiral. The “spiral” sort of looks like twigs haphazardly stuck in the ground. Ditto for the Yellow Marigolds planted in a star formation.

The Roses? From forty yards all looks well. Up close, it’s like the back of a gardening book where the editors show action shots of pest damage. I ask myself, how can so many insects do so much damage so fast? Then I think about going out to the gardens to eat worms.

One fun fact surfaces after four short days. Torrential downpours do not inhibit any bugs from high speed munching. Three of the four days I was gone it rained very hard here. The bugs braved it all to do as much damage as possible.

After I dragged myself through a full garden tour, I lay down in the grass and consoled myself with several brilliant insights:

1. Had I been at the farm during the four days of big eating, I could not have stopped more than a handful of the six zillion bugs from chowing down. It was better that I rested on a lake while they ate.

2. While Lynn has perfected weather control to an alarming degree, I have not. It is a fact that people planning a wedding around here call the caterer first and Lynn second. It is a fact that they think RAIN when they think about the kind of weather I attract. And after these four days they will think PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS as well.

3. The Red Shiso is still alive and thriving, probably because I planted it in a solid bed of all organic non toxic but slug unfriendly iron pellets. It was unrealistic to circle every other plant at the farm with said pellets and sadly, the slugs recognized this truth and made the most of it.

4. Bugs are people too.

5. I know the sound of insects eating and pooping at the same time. Do you?

This afternoon, I did triage work. I mixed Green & Tonic, Emergency Care, Flee Free, Healthy Coat, Golden Armor, Recovery, and Immune Support in water in my big spray tank and hoisted it onto my shoulders. Then I went out and sprayed every sad plant on the farm and anything else that was still green. With all those Essences blowing downwind towards me, I felt a lot better when I was done.

Time will tell if this helped the plants too.