The catalog offers mail-order seeds and plants whose side effects are allegedly similar to cannabis, cocaine, heroin and other recreational drugs. Chotzinoff just wants to talk. But when she locates what she thinks is the right redwood house with solar panels and a greenhouse, the woman who answers the door says she's never heard of Exotic Botanicals. Chotzinoff fails to make that connection, but moves on to meet Doug Beck, president of California Garden Ladies. Beck lives a few miles outside Grass Valley and makes a living collecting and selling live ladybugs to gardeners.
Ladybugs are revered by gardeners because of their wonderful diet - they eat aphids by the hundreds.
Beck takes Chotzinoff on a ladybug hike in the woods. After a half hour he finds just such a place . Putting on his gloves, Beck begins to rummage through a foot-deep layer of composted leaves, twigs and dirt. Less than an inch down, he hits stratum after stratum of ladybugs. Once, on a particularly good day, he and his brother collected 176 gallons in a single outing.