The Gardening Blues Part Dos

Holy cats!  If I wasn't sure before, now I know that gardening in Idaho has to be something akin to Sisyphus trying to roll that stone up hill.  This year, we've had frosts into late June, wind like you wouldn't believe, a population explosion of voles, which resemble large mice with chopped off tails, and now a plague of grasshoppers.  I've just about had it!  My bee balm is starting to look like a collection of sticks, my rose bushes like swiss cheese.  I can live with a few bugs here and there, but when the grasshoppers toppled my tallest hollyhock stalk that was just about to bloom by chewing through the base of it, I lost it.  I broke down and bought a can of "spray".  Tonight I went out to the flower bed and, even though the wind was blowing about 15 mph, I unloaded my frustrations on the bee balm, the catmint, the roses and the hollyhocks.  Then I stood around and gloated at the writhing bodies of my foes in their last gasps on my patio.  I suppose the sprinklers will wash off the spray later tonight, but at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowing at least some of them feel my pain.