It was forbidden for us to kill ladybugs for fear of misfortune. Some say if a ladybug lands on your hands, you'll receive new gloves. If on your dress, a new frock.

Ladybugs are especially enthusiastic aphid gourmets and thus maintain the balance. Aphids are carefully herded by ants, whom I consider far more conscientious farmers than most humans. The roses and peonies on which the aphids graze return each year in full health, whereas we've rendered countless acres hardpacked and infertile. When the aphids get too out of hand, I spray them off with a hose. It takes them a day or two to find their way back, or to be rounded up like dogies by the ants.

As for the ants, when they're building their cities too near a place I prize, I begin working to discourage them with continuous plantings over their metropolis. Practices such as pouring boiling water down their holes are barbaric and needlessly cruel.

I do some companion planting, but not with much conviction. Ultimagely, I'm more itnerested in my mythological garden felicities than in botany. At places like Perelandra in West Virgina, Scotland's Findhorn, or Rodale's farm in Pennsylvania, companion planting is an art and a science. At my house, it's blindman's bluff.

Ladybugs adore tansy. Who wouldn't? Its scent is magnificent. A smattering of its feathery leaves minced onto pancakes or waffles (an old German custom) starts the day in Heaven. When tansy is grown next to roses, the ladybugs also have a convenient neighborhood grocery, a feast of aphids.

Tansy will survive almost anything. It made sense to plant it in the rose garden agains aphids, as well as the poppy frenzy. In fact, tansy, with its big, yellow, button-cluster flower is almost as unruly and prolific as the poppies and takes over their cages in late summer. I've hardly got a friend who hasn't received a pot of it from me (along with ubiquitous lemon balm, oregano, and comfrey, neatly packaged in baskets as "starter" herb gardens!). This is as dirty a trick as giving puppies as door prizes at children's parties. It's a wonder I have friends at all.