I've been known to tell people that swiss chard is the easiest vegetable to grow since nothing seems to eat it.  I won't be saying that anymore. 

You see, an absolutely adorable, striped insect showed up around the swiss chard this summer, and I left the critter alone because it was so cute.  Only weeks later did I catch the chomper in action and figure out why it was so plump.

The disillusionment made me so mad at my buddies that I smashed every single one, so I don't have a photo to show you (nor can I figure out what the bad bug was.)

Even though it set me way behind my frozen greens allotment for the summer, my swiss chard insect taught me a good lesson --- identify, identify, identify!  Now, whenever a new insect shows up in my life, I pull out the books and figure out what it is right away.

During my weekly bug picking and smashing expedition Monday, I came across these fascinating grey scales shingling a dead asparagus twig.  Ten minutes later, I knew that they were mostly harmless --- just katydid eggs to serenade me to sleep next year.  Thank goodness!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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