At long last, my veggies got the dousing they desperately needed. As the clouds parted Saturday afternoon, I walked out to my garden to gaze over the fence at the lush green rows of okra and peppers I envisioned. I imagined that the tomato plants would be growing before my eyes.

As a friend mentioned last week, tap water and rainwater are not the same thing. You can water all you want with the hose, but your vegetable garden is just biding its time until the rain comes. Only then do vegetable plants get serious about growing.

I was not disappointed. In just a few hours, the vegetation in the garden had turned a deeper shade of green. Plants were noticeably taller and bushier. All of this was the direct result of just two-tenths of an inch of rain, which had fallen in a brief but dramatic morning thunderstorm.

All was well in the garden, with one exception. There, at one edge of the plot, lay two squash plants in a crumpled, yellowing heap. Just the day before, these plants had been robust, with leaves the size of my hand and laden with orange blossoms and tiny zucchini fingerlings. Such rapid destruction is the work of either squash bugs or vine borers.

Four other squash plants several feet away still looked healthy. When I examined their leaves, however, I found several active squash bugs and numerous patches of eggs. Squash bugs lay their red or bronze-colored eggs along the veins on the underside of leaves.

I’ve gotten myself in trouble before by candidly discussing disposal methods for various garden insects. If you don’t want to know what I did next, don’t read on. If you ignore this advice and are offended by what follows, please don’t call or write to tell me that I’m an enemy of the planet. And certainly don’t offer to pray for me. I am unrepentant.

My next move was to return with pyrethrin powder, which comes in a round, cardboard shaker, the same-style container in which dried Parmesan cheese is sold. After picking the adult squash bugs off the plants and, true to their name, squashing them between thumb and index finger, I used the same technique to rub away eggs. I then salted the undersides of the leaves with the powder.

On the backsides of several leaves I found hordes of newly hatched squash bugs. At this stage in their young lives, they are tiny, gray, spiderlike insects. I powdered away.

Pyrethrin and rotenone, my weapons of choice, are two naturally occurring insecticides that pose less threat to the garden environment and mammals than synthetic chemicals. They still do the job, but they wear off quicker and tend to impact insects alone.

Having ended my murderous rampage and feeling very self-satisfied, I made a couple of passes around the garden, pulling a weed here and there, moving tomato branches up the rungs in their cages, that sort of thing. I looked down at my bell pepper plants, and stopped dead in my tracks. There at my feet was a plant stripped of its leaves, still bearing a small bell pepper, now half-eaten.

As I surveyed the surrounding plants, all of which seemed perfectly fine, I did a double-take on the plant to the right. Latched onto the stem and partially hidden by a leaf was the perp. It was either a tomato hornworm or a tobacco hornworm, which are very similar. Both are masters of camouflage in a garden and have astonishingly efficient mouths.

This little guy also was kind of cute, and for a brief moment I was tempted to relocate him away from the garden. Then I looked at the skeleton of a pepper plant that now stood as a monument to his breakfast. Let’s just say he won’t be coming around my garden anymore.