Bugs part 2

As well as the death-defyingly cute bugs attacking my pumpkins, there are also some artistic insects trying to invade my house.  We first encountered them this time last year, but it took a while before we figured out what was going on.

I first noticed that there was a strange smear of what looked like mud or clay on a curtain in the bedroom, and I was puzzled as to how I had managed to get a footprint up so high.  I concluded that I must have done it when I was hanging them, and simply not noticed, so I just cleaned it up and forgot all about it.

I then noticed that we had a lot of funny-looking bees in the house that seemed to be coming out of the curtains.  They were all black, but with pale grey stripes and looked nothing like any other bee or wasp I had ever seen.  I followed one back to where it had emerged and pulled the fold in the curtain apart, to be greeted by what looked like a little clay pot made by a child, hanging from my curtain.   Turns out I had Mason Wasps.

These little creatures have a fascinating life cycle, in that the female builds a clay nest made of little cells, into which she deposits a paralysed orb-web spider.  She then lays an egg in the cell with the spider, so the baby wasp has a nice fresh meal to wake up to.  The Mummy wasp also makes a distinct whirring sound when she is building the nest, like a little cement mixer processing the compound for her spider-prison.  I know the sound well now, and can stop the wasps before they get established.

When you have not noticed that the Mason Wasp has been busy whirring away, you close your curtains at the end of the day and get bombarded by stupefied arachnids.  Even for someone not afraid of insects or creepy crawlies, it can be a somewhat harrowing experience.   I dare say the spiders aren’t too impressed either.

There was another new invader in my veg patch the other day.  I had noticed that the rhubarb was looking a little chewed, but I thought it was just random damage as rhubarb leaves are toxic, and used as insecticides in organic farming, so I was fairly sure nothing ate them.  How wrong I was.

Tareka noticed the damage had worsened overnight, and promptly went digging in the mulch to find the culprit.  He was greeted by something like the caterpillar out of "Bug's Life".  It was so fat it looked like it was a CGI and I half expected it to start talking

Turns out it was a cutworm larvae, and it had been eating our rhubarb leaves as it’s rock-hard and will chew through plate metal if it’s hungry enough.

Now I must admit that although I did do a degree in Applied Ecology, and attempt to recycle, make compost and knit my own yoghurt, I am not averse to the sprinkling of Blue Slug Death to prevent slimy critters eating my home-grown falafel, so when Tareka got the manic look in his eye that can only signify the use of Farming Equipment, I graciously stepped aside.

Tareka and I both worked in agricultural R&D for a while, so we are both pretty clued up on the use of pesticides, but while I dreaded the idea of donning the Tyvek suit and breathing apparatus, Tareka seems to relish it, so it has become his job in our little horticultural plan to spray the Evil Chemicals of Doom and destroy the Harbingers of Leaf Wilt.  He had some chemical in the shed (properly stored well out of reach of everyone, in a locked box), and duly measured, mixed and prepared.

 He then went out and sprayed the buggers til they drowned.He

Bugs part 1

I have hayfever.  This is a new thing for me since moving to New Zealand, as I am sure I never had it in England.  In fact, I remember faking hayfever at primary school, so I didn’t have to play on the school field at lunch time, and could hang out in the playground with the other cool kids.

I had an allergy test last year to determine the exact cause of my hayfever…actually, hayfever is a pretty rubbish word for something that makes your entire face feel like it is being gnawed by hungry termites.  I think I should come up with a new name for it, based on the symptoms it produces – streaming nose, alternately watering then crusty eyes, bouts of sneezing, feeling like all your eyelashes have just decided to molt simultaneously and are scraping their way round your cornea like a sadistic synchronized swimming team.

It should be called Itchy Face Torture.

So, I have Itchy Face Torture, and my allergy tests confirmed that I have an allergy to rye grass.  I thought rye was something in that very healthy brown bread people pretend to like, along with buckwheat and falafel, but oh no; it is what NZ dairy farmers grow to feed their cows.  So we moved into the countryside and the Itchy Face Torture began.  I am usually the sort of person happy to load up on appropriate medication and get on with things, so I am not used to having to suffer through discomfort (except with childbirth, but that’s a whole other blog post), but as I am breastfeeding, I cannot take anything that would get into my bloodstream, and therefore into the breast milk.

I have a nasal spray which works for about 20 minutes, and 3 types of eye drops; one from the pharmacy, one from the doctor and one from the surreal herbalist in the airport which Tareka refers to as hippy juju medicine.  So I basically squirt my mucous membranes every 20 minutes and soldier on.

Along with Itchy Face Torture, I am learning just how much of a townie I really am.  Now I’ve grown a few of my own veggies in a little patch of garden before, and bemoaned the usual garden pests – slugs, snails, goldfish-memory forgetting to water the plants – but being out in proper countryside has brought me into contact with a whole load of new animals trying to either eat me, my crop or take over my house.  I am fortunate that pretty much all the bugs in NZ are non-toxic ones (unlike Australia where you are under threat of death from anything with more than 2 legs, or even less if you count the snakes), but that is cold comfort when they are sucking your life-blood from the back of your knee.

The trouble is that a lot of the bugs trying to systematically destroy my hard work in my little veg patch are comic-book cute.  It’s the ultimate defense mechanism “I’m going to decimate your pumpkins but you can’t kill me cos I look like THIS!”