bugs

This year there are pests.  I knew that it was coming.  For a while, our garden was a surprise to any little hungry thing that stumbled on it.  Now, it is expected among a certain population that we will try to grow delicious things in this particular area.  They are alive and waiting.  They are planning future generations based on projected yield.  As far as the slugs are concerned, the hoop house was erected just to keep them cozy for the long cold nights of January.  It is probably working its way into their mythology.  I have a whole bed of bolted brassicas.  Great for the bees!  Also great for the aphids.  I swear, where did all these aphids come from?  On the apple trees, I know the ants planted them.  Watching those busy, busy ants tending their patches of mindless, leaf-sucking grubs makes me feel very scientific and very grossed out.  I run the strip of raised sticky paper around the trunk and feel like a tree ninja, a thousander, changing the very materials that make up the universe for those crazed buggers.  They frantically examine every inch of my barrier from both sides, screaming at each other with their pheromones over the inch wide plateau.  I know that the aphids will gradually disappear from the poor curled apple leaves now that the farmers are foiled, but they will thicken and clump on my arugula (did I plant it too late?), my nasturtiums.  Yucky-yuck.  A part of my philosophy is to keep ambition low, to work with the flow, to grow what does well and leave the finagling to the farmers.  But if it only gets worse the longer you work in the same space, then a mark of seriousness is learning to deal with the pests you get.  At least slugs don't like tomatoes.