I Have Just Removed About A Pound of Skin

Andy had found a recipe involving white beans and kale--which we had a lot of but rarely used as we didn't know what to do with it--so he decided to make it for dinner tonight. All good so far.

When he went out to pick the kale however, he discovered that the backs of the kale leaves were covered with little white somethings. Since I'm the one with the farming background--which never involved kale or little white somethings, incidentally--he came to see what I thought. I thought it was time to switch recipes for dinner. Either we had some sort of egg infestations or the kale had a really unique way of going to seed, and in either case I decided it was time to remove the kale from our garden. I know there are all sorts of ways to remove eggs & things from leaves and use them anyway, but my interest in eating kale has so far been pretty minimal. Throw in some insect eggs and it would have to cure cancer for me to want to eat any more of our kale crop. So I got out my gloves, ripped up all the plants, and started merrily ripping the leaves to shreds for the compost bin.

My arm itched.

Then my ankle itched.

Then my arm itched again.

I can now tell you with definite assurance that it was INDEED a bug problem and they were tiny white bugs (Andy says probably aphids)....and I was covered in them.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow I will apologize to the neighbors for the inadvertent display of a grown woman running through her house screaming and stripping off her clothes while sprinting up the stairs. I realize that might have been a bit of a shock, especially to those with small children. And for any temporary water shortages that Boise might experience after my rather long shower, I'll probably need to apologize for that as well.

And beans with sausage and peppers is a MUCH better idea anyway....