"Nature" is entirely too natural

Our experiment in growing arugula and kale this fall is going about as expected. I water, fertilize, and find them the proper amount of sun, and in turn they neither thrive nor keel over (which is, I suppose, somewhat a success). They do not respond to gentle, soothing talk, singing, or threats. Pests unknown are getting more benefit from them than I am.

It was for this latter reason that a neighbor came to investigate and diagnose the problem. Although she has a vast store of knowledge herself, she brought along an impressive tome of a plant encyclopedia, required for a class she is taking. She commenced the investigation with a series of questions.

"Where did you get the plants?" she said. "Quality can make a big difference."

I admitted that I had started them all from seed.

She seemed impressed at this. "So you started them indoors..."

"Uh, no, I figured the main reason you do that is to give them a head start in the cold spring, but since it's fall..." It had made sense at the time, but a lot of things seem to make sense until you realize they are very, very wrong.

The questions continued about sun, fertiIizing, whether I had observed any critters on them, etc. I hadn't, but clearly there were critters on them because there were big holes in some in the leaves.

"And you looked on the underside of the leaves?"

I had not. If Ii turned the leaves over, and there was a critter there, I would be at great risk of touching it. And above all, my gardening motto is: Have as little contact with nature as possible.

But she, brave soul, is not afraid of contact with nature, and declared that we would not only inspect the underside of the leaves but do so with her jeweler's loupe, which would allow us to see any potential critters roughly at 2000000000% magnification. Thus an aphid would appear the size of a small battleship.

We did so, and although it took the better part of the afternoon for me just to figure out how to use the jeweler's loupe--it defies logic, as far as I am concerned--I finally located a fat, brownish insect.

And as I was inspecting it and we speculated on what it might be, I witnessed a marvelous display of nature. Or maybe the bug was getting tired of being examined and wanted to put on a show.

"It's pooping," I said.

"What? You can see that?"

"Well, a big, clear bubble escaped its rear end. Its assumed rear end,"  I amended. "The one opposite its eyeballs."

She said it certainly "sounded like excrement" to her.

Suddenly I wasn't so gung-ho on consuming this arugula I was working so hard to raise. Or anything else growing in nature, if this was what happened. Probably a lot more of it happened when I wasn't looking.

That was also the Hero's reaction when I related the pooping incident. " I could've gone all day without knowing that," he said. But then his mathematical curiosity kicked in, and he asked for particulars on the pooping. Was it clear, or white? How big was it? How big was the bug? What was the ratio of poop to total bug size?

"Maybe it's beneficial for us," he said finally, trying to put a positive spin on things.

With the amount of scrubbing I now felt I would be compelled to do with anything grown, I couldn't imagine that anything beneficial might remain afterward.

Maybe I should just leave nature to nature. After all, the bugs seem to know what to do with it.

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The Princess and the Hero will soon be getting on a plane and flying a long, long ways, hopefully arriving on the Big Island of Hawaii. That is the plan. There could be a different plan, however, if the Princess has to sit next to someone on the long plane ride who is not the Hero, and she must be forcibly removed from the plane for squeezing the someone's circulation off during turbulent parts of the flight (defined by the Princess as "if I feel like I'm in a plane, it's turbulence"). Stay tuned.