Durable Insects

Just like plants, insects bloom. They look like one thing, then another: a tight green bud gives way to a pink flower; a gray pupa becomes red, with polka dots.

I observe the ladybugs that populate the fields. They come in waves, and when I am washing lettuce, I see what insect is the most prevalent at any given time, not just the ladybugs but of aphids and less desirable insects, too. They cascade over the stainless rim, spilling water and tiny creatures caught up in the catastrophe of my harvest; from their perspective, I make one hell of a natural disaster. I feel guilty enough to spend time skimming the ladybugs off before they hit the “falls.”

Insects are durable, and most will survive the flood. Even the wispy spider clambers out of the lettuce leaf wreckage.

There is another sort of disaster for another insect, the bean beetle. Like most bugs, I’d never seen its type, until I began growing its favorite food in greater quantity and variety. In addition to string beans, we have about an acre of dry beans. Because the dry beans are long-season beans, the bean beetle population has the opportunity to explode.

For the most part, I’ve avoided this scenario by planting the dry beans in a different location every year. But the adults fly, and so by midsummer I expect to start seeing their damage — a lace-like necrosis born from the under-leaf, where the larval stage is inconspicuously gorging itself.

I watch to see if the infestation spreads. Ladybugs and bean beetles are closely related: One eats plants, and one eats the other.

I feel lucky — maybe they drowned in the early August rain — and so by the time the pest gets back to a threatening level, the beans are dry, the canopy withered and we can harvest. We do it the old-fashioned way, and we pull the whole plant, making piles in the field. The plants are tamped into large, 4-foot-by-4-foot-by-6-foot vented sacks for easy transport.

Because there is no threat of rain, we decide to leave sacks on the headland overnight. Sagaponack’s dew is as good as rainfall, so we get a few tarps to keep the moisture off.

The next day, when I pull the tarp off, I see I had not wholly escaped infestation. Hundreds of bright yellow, armadillo-esque larvae dot the vented sacks. Approximately halfway through their development, the soft-bodied larvae managed to survive the initial assault, then also managed to worm their way through all that compressed plant material. They now cling to the surface of the sack.

So before I decide how I will cumulatively crush them, I acknowledge their fortitude.