Gardening trials and gnomes from hell??

I have been trying new variations in my front garden every so often for the past 7 years to find a low maintenance method for beauty.  I thought I had finally found it!   I ordered expensive bulbs from a mail order catalogue that had these bulbs arriving for fall planting all the way from Holland itself!  So they had to be fantastic! Right?

Well they were incredibly beautiful, I won't knock them down for that.  However, I ordered two varieties of red lilies; one was a border variety that was supposed to grow to about 12-15 inches tall, and the other was a "Hedge" variety that should have come up up to about 25-30 inches tall.  They are meant for full sun as the catalogue stated which is what it got....the first grew to about 25-30 inches tall and the second grew to about 45-48 inches tall!  plus they were supposed to grow in stages to have blooms all summer long.  Well half of them that should bloom in July were ready to open this week, and the august blooms wouldn't have been far behind.

So by the time august comes around all the green and reds are brown.

Well I noticed last year and again this year these damned buggers.....

And they turned this:

Into this:

and you can still see the damned thing eating away at my plants.


So, I thought I would learn a little about these little adversaries.  They hibernate in the soil, in the bulb, over the winter and start their eating/mating/laying eggs/ becoming larvae that cover themselves with poop procedure over and over again.  One plant can have three or more generations!  

Since this is the only plant that I have that they will eat, I am vacating the all-you-can-eat buffet and will drown them after I remove the bulbs and throw them away tomorrow.

Then I will get on with the rest of my gardening adventures.  I am starting late but I have vegetables growing from seed in little pots on trays from the garden centre that I have been chasing the sun with around the house.  I had even made a make-shift green house to protect them from the rain and potential rodents.

Wish me luck, I will try to keep posting here even though I have been keeping a gardening journal.