Dirty fingernail season

It's that time of year when my nails never seem to get clean and I don't really mind because that means my hands are in the warm, fine soil.  Ron finished renovating our raised beds this weekend and refilled them with soil and lovely compost.  I planted the usual veggies and some new ones for us - white carrots, artichokes, and a short season corn.  The lettuces are ready for the outer leaves to be harvested for salad, and the garlic - oh, the beautiful garlic! - is growing to beat the band.  Today we're blessed with a soft, constant drizzle so we turned off the sprinklers and we can almost hear the seeds germinating.

I work in an Extension Office and I wish my grandsons were here to witness our office bug war, so cool!  Clients bring in samples of problems they're having in the home gardens and yesterday we got peach tree leaves full of aphids in the rolled up leaves and a cherry leaf sample with a cluster of teeny black bugs that we first thought were black aphids.  Under the microscope we could see that they were just hatched lady beetle larva so we put the two samples together last night in a zip top bag.  Today, the black lady beetle larva are eating the aphids!  This is a lucky client as she has the most natural battle going on in her garden, bad bugs v.s. good bugs.  I've never found lady beetle larva in my garden even though we have lots of lady bugs.  I'll have to look a little closer.

We've worked out a system for battling bad bugs in our garden and orchard.  It's Ron's job to let me know at the first hint of an infestation.  He's very detail oriented and spots them much faster than I will.  Then, it's my job to do something about them.  I have a very high tolerance for bug damage and try to wait for the good bugs to do their job.  If I spray right away and get rid of the problem, the good bugs will just move on to the next infested garden.  I like them to stick around and I don't like spraying pesticides, even organic ones, if I can help it.  We don't have many bug problems so something must be working right.

Reminds me of the communities we live in.  The best ones are full of good people who have a way of overpowering the bad ones.  I believe that good always triumphs over evil, although sometimes and in some situations, it takes longer.  My solution is prayer, faith and a little pixie dust.

Still looking for turkey chicks to hatch under the hen that was due on Monday.  Ron found two more nests, one in the woods, one in the flower bed.  One nest down by the barn was raided by skunks.  Our neighbor called to tell us that a hen has been laying by their barn door.  Ron went up to check on her and she's sitting now.  I think our neighbors have adopted her because they named her "peepers" and are watching out for danger.  They're good neighbors.  I hope you find the "good bugs" in your life today.