The Minnesota Farm Woman

But they’re not. Ladybugs, I mean. They’re some type of Asian beetle that is the evil twin of the sweet garden-friendly ladybug, and these doppelgänger dive bomb anything that moves and sometimes even bite. Yesterday morning, I saw just a few. Last evening, there were many more. Today there are hundreds of the little buggers flying around and covering the house, with some of them managing to find their way inside. How, I don’t know. I feel creepy and crawly just thinking about them. I could wish for a hard freeze to kill them off, except that our October weather is much too beautiful to wish for anything other that exactly what the good Lord blessed us with. It is so warm that I got overheated this afternoon while working out in the garden. It was either that or I just got over excited by finding a cucumber, some basil and a handful of cherry tomatoes that were cocooned by the weeds and untouched by our frosty nights. The pumpkin vines were touched by the frost, however, and died an unfortunate death before most of them ripened. If memory serves me right, Ma Ingalls made some sort of delicious faux apple pie out of the green pumpkins left over in her homestead garden. Although HE would probably like a pie, this Farm Woman doesn’t let things go to waste around here, either. I have my front porch decorated with corn stalks and lots of green pumpkins. Right now, they are covered with crawling orange and black Asian beetles. If you stand back and squint your eyes, you might think I grew some of those warty bumpy specialty pumpkins they sell in the Farmer’s Markets in bigger cities. After Halloween, if they’re not frozen solid, I’ll chop them up and feed them to the chickens. Pumpkins are said to ward off chicken diseases, and besides that, my chickens will eat anything. Almost anything, that is. Although they love all types of bugs and worms, they don’t like Asian beetles.