Thursday 7 July 2011

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.

:-)






6 comments:

  1. Wow, four times in one session? That IS downright rude. 'nough to make me quit altogether.
    Good on ya for persevering. And with sense of humor intact even!

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  2. I hear you. We try to respect all of the other critters that call this farm home. But it can be hard. One day (two summers ago) I was walking down the lane with my newborn, just-two year old, and just-four year old...the older two were pretending to be lions in the long grass when all of a sudden...wasps! My two year old got stung two or three times...once on the lip which swelled up to 4 times its usual size. Scary stuff. And this mama was hard pressed to control the urge to pesticide the crap outta that wasp nest. But instead, we just stay out of the long grass...

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  3. They're plain evil!!! The swelling was scary for me, but I can imagine on a babe it musta been really scary. But I just can't being myself to use all these chemicals that others are sloshing around without a second thought. Every gardening store I visit just has litres and litres of pesticides, weed killers etc, and people must be buying gajillions of litres of the stuff every week to have their perfect little lawns that look like playmobil gardens. I actually bought something called roundup but I just can't bring myself to use it. It's just sitting there in the shed, me silently hating it. How much to control the garden and how much to leave to nature is something constantly weighing on my conscience! In the meanwhile, ground elder is taking hold. Evil, evil ground elder. Any suggestions?

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  4. Love the Monty P song, had forgotten that!

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  5. Timmy got got four ties by one wasp last year - made him totally freak out ever since when anything buzzy is anywhere in the vicinity.

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  6. but it didnt just end there did it.. ;( they truly got thier revenge...sandi

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