It's a bugs life

Well the courgette plant slowly crept up behind it's neighbouring bed fellows and grew over night. In the last few weeks it has overtaken most of the veg bed (now a courgette bed) and is producing flowere left right and centre. Great - so what is the ideal length to pick them? My book says 10 - 13cm, but that seems very small - should they not be a bit bigger? Is it just fashion speaking?

A keen gardener I know said they should be picked asap but that means they will be quite small - hardly enough to scoff in a ratatouille- but apparently they grow into marrow's overnight - hmmm reminds me of Wallace and Gromit and the Wererabbit. All I know is, I have pleanty of bugs and no rabbits, and courgettes have a prickly underside.

Now, the bugs in my garden seem to be very happy with my gardening efforts, when I see fly and so forth, I pop them outside and try to get all the bugs to die and get eaten by birds (my Mum's suggestion0, but birds don't seem to like landing in our garden - damn neighbours cats I think. Anyway, why are there so many different coloured micro bugs when one will do/ Why are they eating all the basil, the host and anything else they can scuttle to/ Slugs and snails aren't an issue - squash em, salt them, throw em; as long as they aren't near a plant fine. But these ones have little legs (I have good eyesight), and they have friends. I wish they would go and munch somewhere else, I can see gardening being a game of two halves- me planting and them munching. I didn't say fair halves.