The bugs have arrived: the yellow pinstriped Colorado potato beetles and their lumpy orange babies, as well as the clumsy iridescent green and copper Japanese beetles. Together they are skeletonizing the leaves of the eggplants, potatoes, and beans. So much digging and sowing, weeding and watering, being stripped away one miniscule mouthful at a time.
Organic insecticidal soap has left the beetles cleaner, perhaps, but no less voracious. We have crushed a few and yelled at others, but we are outnumbered.
Gardening, it seems, requires some acceptance of non-germination, molding fruit, and bug-bitten leaves. Only poisoned gardens are blemish-free. And when the futile rage subsides, and you look very closely, even the beetles are beautiful.