Life is a Mixed Bag, Isn’t It?
Why do we grasp the illusion that it can all be good?
I wandered out into my garden this morning and picked a few peaches from the tree. The tree is loaded this year, as it is every year. That seems like it would be a good thing, but there is one caveat. There is a little tiny worm in every one of the peaches. The moth that lays it’s eggs on the peaches is very thorough. She doesn’t miss a one. Here we have this seemingly gorgeous crop of peaches. I can look up in the tree at perfect peaches, but by the time they are ripe, there is a growing brown spot of rot on one side of almost every peach.
Usually, I just cut the rotten spot out, remove the little caterpillar from next to the seed and enjoy half a peach. This is not ideal. The best thing would be to have nothing but perfect, unspoiled peaches. Think of how many quarts I could put in the freezer! But the downside to that is, the sticky traps that would trap the moths would also trap beneficial pollinator bees, and other creatures I would not want to trap. I had one up one year and when I saw what I had done I ripped it out of the tree and threw it in the trash. I have chosen the route of no harm in my garden, and that means I must share my peach crop with a nasty little worm.
