BROADBEAN VEGAS

As I was doing my daily pre-breakfast garden tour this morning I couldn't help but sense the tiny loud music, pounding rhythms and sounds of general revelry coming from my row of broadbeans.

One doesn't often make a connection between broadbeans and Las Vegas, but that is what came to mind when I bent over and peered down into what was in fact the main thoroughfare along each upper stem of my broadbean plants, where crowds of touring aphids careened here and there, bumping into one another while on their way to even greater delights somewhere ahead as though waving fistfuls of cash, the caretaker ants rubbing their hands together in satisfaction at the house cut. Each stem resembled Sin City on a busy night when Elvis hadn't yet left the building.

I've read somewhere that low to moderate numbers of aphids will do no harm to a plant, so I decided to let the aphids party for now and give the Carrie Nation ladybugs a chance to get things back in balance; but if those aphids keep me awake tonight...