Yesterday I discovered that the aphids on my rose bush out front had begun to invade my vegetable garden. So I bought a pack of ladybugs, which love aphids, and released them on the plants.

The aphids didn’t seem alive before the ladybugs came. The other day, I scraped them off with the blade of my cutters and they barely moved. But when the ladybugs began crawling on the bush, the aphids sprang to life and moved to the underside of leaves to hide. Within seconds, the ladybugs were catching aphids beneath their bodies and raising their black bug heads to bring their mouths down, hard, on those tiny green devils.

This morning I read about ladybugs, also called ladybirds, lady beetles, lady-cow, may-bug, golden-knop, golden-bugs, barnabee, and bishop-barnaby. I read how they are poisonous to small animals, how it is considered good luck when they walk on you, how they can apparently copulate for up to nine hours at a time (although that wasn’t what I saw). I was reminded of the following nursery rhyme:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home
Your house is on fire and your children are gone
All except one, and that’s Little Anne
For she has crept under the warming pan

There is also an older version of this poem:

Dowdy-cow, dowdy-cow, ride away heame,
Thy house is burnt, and thy bairns are tean,
And if thou means to save thy bairns
Take thy wings and flee away!

I love how those small things that have been around forever can suddenly become fascinating.