Higad Season Again

The good thing about blogging about your garden is it lets you see patterns and cycles. These days, we're seeing the yearly higad invasion of our garden, just like last year's August wave. The guyabano is also fruiting again, about a month earlier than it did in 2007. I can't wait until people can aggregate garden and farm blogs to pinpoint the effects of climate change certain crops and locales.

Although it's not so bad outside my room now that the mucuna vines are gone, the itchy worms make you paranoid in the garden. You walk around more cautiously than ever, afraid of a ninja higad that is waiting for the right moment before it drops on your shoulder, in your shirt, unleashing little hairs that give you welts and won't quit until you get small red dots from scratching.

You find them under leaves, and when you're walking and look down, you see their droppings, usually dark "pellets". Below you can see one eating an oyster mushrooms, and it's turned the poop off-white. It's funny! (On the lower mushroom you see the droppings pre-mushroom eating.)



I am trying to find meaning in their existence. Is it rainy season, a season of regeneration, and is nature trying to keep me from intervention in the garden (while at the same time providing fertilizer in the form of castings)?

I can't really think of any predators to this moth-worm (the chickens won't eat it), but if there are any, I might need to develop their habitat to keep the prey in check.

In any case, I go on, trying to co-exist with these creatures.