Saturday, April 2, 2011

The life of the Cucumber Beetle


I know more than you'd ever want to know about the cucumber beetle. They are are bad little stinkers, they eat the roots and leaves of the cucumber plant, amongst other things, which you might plant in your garden, if you have a green thumb, or a farm. While covering cucumber plants at Green Gate to eradicate these tiny pests, I decided I wanted to learn more about this day glow lady bug. For this I consulted google, my source for all things unknown. If in doubt, always google. Apparently these little bugs migrate to the cucumber and overwinter. If you're like me, you have no idea what overwinter is either. Google gives a long lengthy definition, here is my best interpretation.Imagine a rainy cold Saturday, you get deep under the covers, turn off the lights, and snuggle in your marshmallow bed until summer. The cucumber beetle does pretty much the same thing, they conk out till summer under a bed of leaves, and when they wake up, they're exactly where they should be. Which is exactly why I envy this stripey little doodle. From what I can tell, this bug knows exactly what it wants. Sometimes I wish it were that easy, wake up crawl out of bed, smell the cucumber and go to town. It's so simple and yet so perfect. Exactly what life seems to lack at 29. Everything is uncertain, and difficult, and sometimes I'm just so tired. Some times I have no idea what I'm doing on the farm, I hate bugs, in fact I like Off, I love it, I love the smell, and the oily chemical feel, I don't have a green thumb, I don't cook, I don't garden, I don't like dirt, and I will always find the ant pile. But despite all the glaringly obvious reasons why I should stay inside, I find the one thing that makes me want to spend my waking hours avoiding ant piles. I love simplicity. I love that lettuce is lettuce, I love that for every problem there is a clear and tested solution, I love that you fill the four inch pot, poke the seed in, place it in the bin, water the pots and know what you're going to get in the end. I wish life was more like the cucumber beetle.

Lesson #56: Maybe it's about simplicity?

No comments:

Post a Comment