Vanderbrew

My garden is not a peaceful, idyllic place where plants grow freely and produce bountiful herbs and vegetables for us to eat - it is a place where war is waged against a relentless and seemingly limitless foe. It is not a modern war fought from afar with chemicals or flame or hired mercenaries. It is an old war, fought hand to slime, one foe at a time. A war where traps are laid to ensnare the unwary, where captured foes are shown no mercy but are drowned in cups of beer and where the dead bodies of my foes will decompose in the compost bin, destined to fertilize the plants that they sought to consume. It was not I who began this war. I would rather it not be necessary at all. I am willing to sacrifice a few leaves here and there to keep the environment stable. However, I am not willing to sit back and watch while my entire crop is consumed, root, stem, leaf and fruit.

—

It began, as most things do, with a seed. Not a metaphorical seed, but a physical one. I planted turnips and onions, beets and parsely, lettuce and radishes. One morning, the turnips were all but gone. Almost every leaf eaten away and only the veins remaining, like a skeleton showing the shape of what was once a vibrant seedling.

“Curse those pests, I should do something about them.”

Ah, but the folly of the procrastinator. I’d like to think that it was generosity that stayed my hand.

“Well, maybe they just needed to make up a bit of a shortfall. It’s been pretty rainy lately and there’s probably a large population.”

I let things slide. I did some reading, but the best solution for dealing with slugs was manual. Pick them off and dispose of them. This was a distasteful solution so I continued to ignore the situation. I checked on the seedlings frequently. I fretted over the daily losses.

“Hmm…It looks like the turnips might be able to make a comeback. I think I see some new leaves. Oh, dear, weren’t there more beets than this yesterday? Speaking of yesterday, where are the parsley shoots that were coming up?”

One day, I realized. Everything was gone except for the lettuce mix and the ragged radishes who’s leaves looked like the tattered clothing of people trying to survive on the edge of everything and I realized. The beans and peas were chewed and chewed, some with an airy vein structure where there should have been a leaf and others with naught but a stump for a stem and I realized. This was not a garden, this was a war.

And yet, I did little. I made a brief attempt at fighting back. I went out at night, flashlight in hand and picked off the slugs and snails that I found, placing them in a bucket of water. I hoped that they’d drown, but they simply crawled out. I spent time pushing them back in with a stick, thinking maybe they just needed more time to succumb. Soon, very few were still moving so I put the bucket aside and retired to bed. In the morning, the bucket held almost no slugs. They had seemingly escaped after I left.

“Oh, well, I put the bucket down in a different part of the yard, maybe they won’t be back to bother the beans that I planted recently.”

Then, I planted the tomato seedlings that had been growing under lights in the garage. The next day there were a few holes in the leaves but it was nothing that couldn’t be overcome.

Soon after, I planted the basil, which had also been growing under lights. I checked the basil in the night after I’d planted it. Three hours after I’d planted it. Five plants. All showed damage. One was swarming with earwigs and had had two leaves eaten away. This was the straw. The camel’s back was broken. They had gone after the basil.

You have to understand, I love pesto. I have tried more than a few different recipes to find the one that I consider the best. I grow my own basil just so that I can make this pesto. Thinking of some bug eating my basil and preventing me from enjoying the pesto in the future aroused an ire in me that little else I’d seen in the garden had. It was now time to fight back.

Fight back I have. Picking snails and slugs from the ground and from leaves. Drowning them in a cup of beer. Laying traps for earwigs and ambushing slugs with man-made shelters that will be easy to find and remove. I think that it’s working. The population is dwindling. Only time will tell, but I’m well on my way towards winning this war.

—

Let this be a lesson to all bugs everywhere onions, parsley, turnips, beets, it’s ok. I can withstand the loss. But, when you touch my basil, you cross a line. You perform an action with grave consequences and I will not relent in any way. I will not hold back. I will carry the fight to you, to your home, to your family. I will not stop until my garden is allowed to flourish with only the minor blemishes that are expected from a balanced ecosystem.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 10:18 pm and is filed under Garden, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.