When Fertilizer is Not so Good for Plants

I love my garden. I love everything about it. I love browsing nurseries looking for the perfect plant, seed or bulb. I love planting in the fall with the anticipation of seeing something spectacular sprout up in the Spring. And in the Spring I like moving the heavy pile of wet leaves deposited in the Fall, to discover that the perennials are still there, pale, sometimes yellow in color and struggling to make it through those leaves. Yup, I like just about everything about a garden, .....................except the bugs.

I have battled all sorts of bugs, but I think this year, I have the most revolting bug ever! When you see it, you are momentarily fooled into believing that it is a lady bug. That friendly, eat all the aphids off the roses, good for the garden bug. But it is not. Same color, no spots. And instead of being a helpful little creature, it has an unbelievable appetite, and its plant du jour is a lily, my beautiful, pricey oriental lilies. Starting at ground level, they munch the foliage about 2/3 of the way up the stalk, leaving about 1/3 of the leaves and the buds of the flowers. They need to have the foliage at the top of the plant, as they need to deposit a substantial dollop of poop into which they lay their eggs. The eggs hatch, eat the poop for nourishment and then hop on up to the buds for dessert, leaving just a sad, sad stalk.
I battled them last year, but this year they were way out of control, so I took my just sharpened sheers, and cut every single lily down to the soil. Just the thought of scraping off beetle poop to save my lilies totally creeped me out. So my solution, take away the food source, force the little bugs to go elsewhere.
I am hoping against hope that the lily bulbs in the ground, just go back to sleep, and awaken next year to a garden sans this shi**y little bug. I am going to miss all the brilliant colors that the different varieties brought to the garden especially colorful for the 4th of July, but there is no way I was going to scrape beetle poop from the leaves of all of the lilies that I have, if I get too verklempt, I am going to tell myself to suck and up and just go look at a photo from the non-poopy years!