blister beetles
I was all fat and sassy on my gardening success about six weeks ago. The potatoes looked lush and verdant and the tomatoes started from seed were actually in the ground and, you know, not dead yet. A regular hedge of sunflowers seemed to be doubling daily in size. Zinnias? Guaranteed to grow. Zinnias and sunflowers remain the final bastion of retreat when all other efforts have succumbed to the black thumb.
Except apparently there's something called a head-clipping weevil, and I am pondering Genesis 3 anew. Thorns infesting the ground is bad enough, but little bugs that precisely decapitate the sunflowers immediately before they blaze into full bloom? New devilry.
Them and the blister beetles. Don't even ask. My pride in my potato patch has been stripped to the stems, and summarily excavated. Forty pounds of cute red fingerling potatoes, so not all is lost, but the little gremlins moved to the tomatoes next, and my eye began to twitch a little.
Diatemaceous earth doesn't touch 'em. They sneeze off the neem oil like it's a cold spate in the shower. And if you pick 'em off by hand, you break out in fat fluid blisters.
I considered putting a bounty on them, but I don't actually want to be presented with a sack of evidentiary beetle pelts. Acid scorch and all that, though we have two boys who would undoubtedly be game to try.
So I and my team of bug hunters have been reduced to shaking 'em off onto the weed barrier and stomping on 'em. This has reduced their plaguelike ranks, at least, and the tomatoes are recovering. Got a little handful of Sungolds yesterday, and the vines are groaning with more.
But I can't avoid noticing that growing fruit is a troublesome endeavor. Almost like the ground is cursed, or something. Beat the weeds and here come the locusts. Trample the locusts and here comes the hail. Having babies not only hurts, but it's a lot of work.
Joy to the World was written in 1719 by a guy named Issac Watts. First verse is very famous, second verse reasonably so, and the third verse more obscure:
No more let sins and sorrows grow
Nor thorns infest the ground
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found...
Jesus has come, and 1 Corinthians 15 tells us that now He must reign until all His enemies are under His feet. All the curses His footstool, and the last curse is death. In the first Adam, sin leavened the whole world. In the new Adam, the leaven of His blessing works back through the loaf, bit at a time, one baby at a time, one scrubby tomato plant at a time, the ungainly but faithful labors of His people pulling up the thorns. Up they come again, but Christ is risen, and we have good work to do.