Ford and Chas have two buckets of ladybugs in their hands at the local nursery and they are looking at the hundreds of them crawling inside the bucket. The bucket is filled with shavings and they tilt the container round like a gyroscope on some invisible axis before them, trying to see all those ladybugs as if in an effort to count them all the clear platic tub, behind the bilengual paragraphs of instructions and disclaimers and branding on the package’s outer skin. I have found a boutique huechera, Key Lime Pie, and return to my own set of disclaimers with narrowed eyes for a few seconds before their intense excitement catches up to their awe. Chas has redefined priorities and the circular sprinkler attachment, the one he has been carrying around for fifteen minutes: brown plastic with ten black prongs, used in this manner as an alien spacecraft, is laid to rest momentarily on the nursery’s potting table, beside eight other buckets of ladybugs. Ford has set a diode battery-powered dragonfly necklace with blinking red light on the table already. The area has become a still life, a shelf of curiosities for the young collector.
“Mommy, can we get some ladybugs? we really need a whole bunch of ladybugs for those aphids in the chives. Please, mom?” Ford pleads and Chas steps up behind him, “Yeah, dey’re so tool! We got a WOT of wadybugs Ford, huh? Yeah! Wet’s go put em in de aphids in a gawden now Arrrr! Jus wike in ‘Bug’s Wife’ huh?! (begins to reenact a scene from said movie, very physically carrying the ladybug bucket into his character as he stomps down an aisle of shade-tolerant plants, splattering water puddles along the way. Ford continues to peer in through the clear plastic container while I watch Chas roam, half my face smiling and biting my lip at the same time.