A few posts back I asked for helpful suggestions about what garden pest might have been eating my mint. With the help of a clear day, the trusty digicam and my reading glasses, I have finally found the malefactors.
At first I thought this chameleonic little dude here,
a lover of other herbs besides mint as I already had cause to know (they also like sage, another herb that mostly gets left alone by pests, and as with mint they blend in beautifully with the green) was the only culprit.
BUT NO ... the tiny woolly bears were in on the act as well. I know it looks like a giant monster here, but that is a small mint leaf, as you can see from its size in the previous photo relative to the tip of a modestly sized index finger.
Bastards. No prizes for guessing what happened to these creatures after they'd had their portraits taken. It's all very well trying to be Buddhist-like about living creatures and so on, but there are limits.
3 comments:
I was moved to try some less violent methods of pest control when a dear friend who is studying Buddhism was upset by my laying cockroach baits and pouring boiling water down ants' nests.
I bought one of those electronic gadgets that emits special silent-to-humans noise frequencies and while it took about five weeks to kick in, it seems to work wonders. Hardly a cockie and no ants in the house at all during the last months of summer and autumn. I'm keeping it going through winter and will re-assess when the warm weather arrives.
Mind you, ever the cynic, I do wonder if it might be affecting me subliminally, and Miss Clementine, my sweet cat, does seem to be meouwwing a lot more just lately. I wonder if she's trying to sing along with the "soundless" noise waves?
Don't know if it works on caterpillers, though.
Karen
look on the bright side. They probably have a nice minty taste.
And the protein!
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