All things bright and beautiful?

Changes have been happening to me. Twitchy, nervous ones.

You see I was out in the garden the other day, gleefully attacking a patch of nettles, triumphing over nature, over just one small patch of my garden-cum-jungle. It seemed fair d'incum, only a small patch of nettles really, since I have happily let the rest of the garden become insectopia this year, I have let it be WILD, WILD, WILD. Just look at it!

Pretty jungley huh?

Now, the problem is this - WASPS!!! Oh my goodness, are there enough wasps out there at the moment? Not only them, but also (deep breath) hornets. Uggggh!!! You can't have your cake and eat it, it seems. If you're going to be all wild and organic and decide against the pesticides, you're gonna get all manner of nasties lurking in hidey holes, wild nooks and crannies. And the other day, just as I was pulling up the nettles we talked about earlier, I got bitten, or stung, by a wasp four times. That's just freakin' rude in my book. That is bad manners. Bad gratitude for providing these nasties with a home. In the name of love. They are having a riot in our garden. They are having a full blown waspival in our lettuces, (read that wasps - ours) ditto the beets area. Bah!

I am trying to love them. To share nicely with them, to make my peace with these stingy things that don't make honey or seem to be all that useful. Yet I'm flinching and jumpy every time I'm in the garden now and I sense some tiny movement, buzz or tickle. I'm probably highly amusing to watch in my insecty paranoia-fuelled crazy jumpetyness. I'm now racing out of my veg plot lickety split instead of loitering, enjoying it.

I keep laughing to myself whenever I think of this Monty Python song from the album Monty Python Sings, which I though I'd copy out for you all, since it's funny and true. Reminds me of the yin and yang, the flipside of mama nature. That fact that she is a sweet giver of lovely things, and a bad-ass as well!!!

All things Dull and Ugly

All things dull and ugly,

All creatures short and squat,

All things rude and nasty,

The Lord God made the lot.

Each little snake that poisons,

Each little wasp that stings,

He made their brutish venom,

He made their horrid wings.

All things sick and cancerous,

All evil great and small,

All things foul and dangerous,

The Lord God made them all.

Each nasty little hornet,

Each beastly little squid,

Who made the spiky urchin,

Who made the sharks? He did.

All things scabbed and ulcerous,

All pox both great and small,

Putrid, foul and gangrenous,

The Lord God made them all.

Amen.

:-)