I love gardening – the scents, the feel of rich loam between fingers and the glorious colors. But there are a few things I don’t like and most of them have to do with bugs. Sure, dragonflies are lovely and who doesn’t like it when a ladybug is on one’s sleeve? But there are many annoying, painful and destructive bugs. Some of the worst are grubs. It is yucky (and yes, I carefully chose that word) to dig down into the veg bed and come up with vile squirming pasty-white grubs.

Chickens, on the other hand, long for grubs the way that I yearn for the chocolate that I recently had in France. Luckily for the chickens, grubs are easier to come by than those dark chocolate truffles. It is funny how their love of grubs has changed my gardening experience. Where once I would hastily drop the grubs into a jar to be disposed of later, now when I find a grub, I cheerfully call, “Who wants a bug?” The girls come running to the fence and I toss it to them. What ensues is a rather unruly scrimmage for the treat. The grubs make them so happy that I actually look forward to finding grubs. I even dig a little extra to look for them! Yesterday, planting leeks, I found only three grubs. The girls were disappointed. And so was I.