Living Poop

Now before you think that I have gone completely off my rocker, let me say that living poop does not make me happy. This is a different kind of post all together.
It goes something like this...

After supper this evening, Bill was washing dishes and I was putting food away when Mira comes in and says, "Mom! You've got to came see this!"
Wary of the interests of my children, I ask "What?"
Her reply, " The chives have bloomed and they are HUGE!"
"I've seen chive blossoms before and I am in the middle something here" (I was picking the roast away from the fat and my hands were just a tad greasy)
"No! You really have to see these! They are so BIG!"
"I know how big chive blossoms get. They get really big, right?"
"But these are HUGE! They are all big and poofy! Like this big!" Accompanied by vague hand gestures.

Now, before we go any further in this tale, let me explain about chives in my yard. I cannot tell you how many chive plants have been killed in my yard. Everything else can grow and thrive, everything but chives. The reason? Mira. Liam and Simon to a lesser extent, but mostly it is Mira. The kid LOVES chives. Mom has a pretty healthy chive patch and so when Mira would kill of a plant, I would beg another bunch from Mom. And there is also usually someone who is dividing their garden who is looking for some poor innocent to foist some chive plant on. Most people have too much chives. Most people do not live with Mira. She normally will level a chive plant. Just snack it away until it looks like it just joined the army. Brush cut city. Until last year. Last year was different. Last year, she found a chive plant growing on the river bank by Mom's house. Mom had tossed it there a few years before when she could not find any other gardener to take it off her hands. Mira sought and received permission to get a pot and dig part of it up. This became HER chive plant. No mother was ever as protective of her offspring as Mira is of her chive plant. Knuckles were rapped and boys were sternly warned to stay away from HER chives. Mine, of course, were fine to plunder. The same thing happened this year with her shooing all away from HER plant. And so it bloomed. For those of you who know chives, this comes as no surprise. For MY children, it was a wonder!
It took about three minutes to convince her that I had actually seen chive blossoms before, and, yes, they were rather large. I explained that I had chives before she was born. That was enough to convince her.
A few minutes later, Liam comes bursting in and exclaims "You've got to come see this!" You may be beginning to get a feel for why the phrase "You've got to come see this!" is often followed by me saying "What, exactly, is this thing of wonder that I NEED to see?"
Liam's reply was much more ominous than Mira's earlier one.
"There are bugs on your plants that look like living poop!!!"
O.K. That got my attention. This was new. This, I will go check out. And sure enough, there are bugs on my lily plants that look like living poop. Having picked a fair number of lily beetles
off my lilies this year, one quick google search later and I was looking at the larva for lily beetles who, for some reason, cover their backs in their own excrement. I guess that it is probably to discourage hand picking them. It certainly worked for me. But these little guys can really cause some serious devastation! I may have to pull out all of my lilies and spray the whole area with some dreaded poison. I am going to assess the situation in the bright light of day tomorrow and armed with rubber gloves and a bucket of bleach water, pluck and drown as many of the disgusting little buggers as I can. And there are many! Thankfully my lily patch is limited and the lily beetles only eat "true" lilies and not day lilies.

But still. Covering themselves in their own poo? Ick.