grubalub

friday night i was out in the back yard, doing my usual garden slug round-up and relocation, when i found this fat green grub in the grass. some gardeners might be distressed by the presence of a grub in their yard. this gardener? not one bit. as much as i love plants i love bugs even more (except the nasty little ones like aphids, white flies, leafminers...those i could do without.)

i’ve never had any kind of problem with grubs, caterpillars, cutworms and the like, except one year when about a million small brown caterpillars exploded all over a pine bush in my back yard. i swear they munched down every needle but didn’t touch any other plants, it was so bizarre...and when i went to collect and relocate them they were all sticky and smelled like pine. they were like a writhing, squishy mass of air freshener.

my only memories of grubs are from other peoples’ gardens. as kids my friend andrea and i were encouraged to wander the furrows of her dad’s garden and pluck all the grubs off of his tomatoes--i can’t remember what was done with them, i think her parents took them and probably killed them--but during the hunt i remember being fascinated, and so excited every time we found one. i was jealous that my parents’ garden didn’t have grubs.

there was also one incident when my grandma found a grub in a store-bought ear of corn while my family was at her house for dinner. i thought it was such a bonus--i so desperately wanted to play with that grub, you have no idea...but she chucked the whole thing.

finding this grub was like, ahhh, finally one came to me, and this time no adults can take it away! for now it’s in captivity, in a bed of grass and veggies in a glass jar on the kitchen table, but i’ll relocate it outside once i’ve had my fill of its grubbiness.