August 22, 2006

New Bugs, Politics and Tomatoes


Ah, life as a public official. The drama of the community garden has begun and someone is now going around with a petition to demand that the Steering Committe (which I am on) have a public meeting about the fate of a particular area of the greenspace that is across from all the garden plots. At least it's not boring. I am hesitant to divulge the details since I have recently learned that some of the history of this particular garden is a little shady and involves theft and "hush-hush" reparations.

Suffice it to say that the person complaining was perfectly happy to have the public kept in the dark when he was in charge.

All I really care about is having a lovely garden that the community supports and enjoys but, that is not as easily attainable as you might think.

Meanwhile I have seen a few new bugs and the tomatoes are coming on strong.

Here's the bug update:

I saw two little yellow bugs that are really cute but which I fear are cucumber beetles. They were both tiny and yellow but one had little polka dots (like a lady bug but smaller) and one was striped. I couldn't get my camera to focus so check out the photos in the link. I don't have any cucumbers growing but, they like tomatoes too. FYI - They are damn quick and hard to catch.

The other bug I saw was large and ugly but, possibly a Spined Soldier Bug which would be a good thing since those are beneficial and eat other bad bugs. I'm not completely sure that's what it was though. Once again all my photos came out blurry. This bug is very slow moving and I pretty much had to reason with it to move aside so I could get at one of my ripe tomatoes.

My policy is usually to leave things alone unless I know what it is and know that its bad so that I don't accidentally kill a "good guy."Apparently, sometimes the cute bugs are bad and the ugly one's are good.

As for the tomatoes and eggplant....just look at the photo above. That's just a fraction of what's coming too. Hooray!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You think cucumber beetles are cute?
-Ted

Black Eyed Susan said...

Yes, yes I do.