Spring! (well, not really)

I don't know why, but even though it has been miserably cold and snowy, I have spring fever.  Perhaps it is the longer days or the tiny sprouts I have growing in the greenhouse, or the knowledge that Easter is coming up, but I think it has mostly to do with the ladybugs.

In the city, the arrival of young, and sometimes not so young, women wearing very short skirts and flip flops is a sure sign that spring is right around the corner.  It doesn't have to be very warm mind you, but the scantily clad lasses come out in droves as soon as the buds start to appear on the trees, much to the delight of many leering males.

Up here on the farmette, Itty Bitty Kitty doesn't wear skirts and I pretty much live in the yoga pants  I have never actually practiced yoga in.  I needed a new signal that spring is coming.  This is where the ladybugs come in.

Everybody loves ladybugs and butterflies.  They are so "cute" that retailers have decided that even girls can like them.  They adorn little dresses and rain gear.  There are hundreds of precious little lady bugs and butterflies roaming the streets on Halloween.  The folks over at Bic must have assumed that every ladybug umbrella carrying girl will grow up to be a Lady Pen carrying woman. They are both colorful and feminine, unlike the masculine bumble bee or manly regular pen.

I am not a real sissy when it comes to bugs.  I will admit the first time I picked up an earthworm without  work gloves on was only a couple of years ago, but that is a texture issue and not repulsion issue.  I also have to admit that while I probably wouldn't be letting a stink bug sit on my hand, I don't hesitate to let a ladybug crawl up my arm.  I am sure it is partly because the ladybug has a great PR person who actually named it "ladybug" instead of "piss beetle" or "death bug."  I am pretty sure I would think twice about a piss beetle crawling on me.  It's all in the name.  Kind of like when the Republicans started calling the "Estate Tax," a term most people were ambivalent about, the "Death Tax."  Now that is a tax that can raise some ire!

 Every fall, the ladybugs descend upon our house seeking a warm place to lay their eggs I assume.  My first autumn  at the farmette, I thought it was cute that there were a few ladybugs on the doors and windows in late September, but as we moved into early October,  it was more like a Hitchcock film.  Swarms of ladybugs attached themselves to the porch door waiting for their opportunity to fly into the house; sometimes grabbing onto your hair or clothes on the way in.  It was pretty creepy and disturbing the first time it happened.   Ladybugs kind of lost their appeal.  They soon disappeared into the rafters however and we forgot about them...until spring.

Round about the middle of February we start to see an occasional ladybug walking on the table or across a cold window.  Scrappy Doo always wants to hold it and talk softly to it before he "releases" it outside where I am sure it meets a cold demise.  Slowly the numbers increase until they are dropping from the ceiling onto the dining room table or into you shirt.  Again, a little creepy and disconcerting to have bugs dropping into you food, even the colorful "feminine" kind.

Today I counted twenty-five crawling all over the French Doors that open onto the deck and it made me happy.  I sketched out my garden map, rotating crops just as John Seymour instructed me to.  I am convinced that this is the year I will have plenty of pumpkins, bushels of brussel sprouts and an abundance of asparagus, not to mention the tons of tomatoes that will be growing in the greenhouse.  Was it Einstein who said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

Whether insanity or optimism I can't wait to start my seeds and release the ladybugs.