Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Strange and Unusual Things in the Garden

I haven’t been out to the garden very much lately because it has been so hot. I did finally venture out there and was quite surprised by my findings. I have yellow squash and yellow watermelons growing side by side, which I guess is a big no no. I have a watermelon growing on our squash vine. I’ve named it the squashmelon, original I know. I wonder what it’s going to be like on the inside. I couldn’t imagine having a squash that big, hopefully it’s just a watermelon growing on the wrong vine. Then I was watering a few of the corn plants then I started picking some tomatoes and I spotted this horrible looking creature. If you know me you know I’m quite fond of bugs, but this one was so nasty. It was a huge tomato horn worm. I knew I had to pick it off so I just reached in and tried to pull it off. This sucker was holding on for dear life, it was actually starting to pull up my tomato plant. I then started at one end and started pulling it off two sucker feet at a time. He didn’t like that very much; he started squirting green fluid at me. I don’t even want to know what the green fluid was. When I was close to getting him all the way off the plant he started swinging his back end around, the one with the horn. I don’t know if the horn is soft or hard and I didn’t want to find out, so I let go of him. Then I had to start all over again. It was a very nasty process but I finally got him off. I put him in one of the many cups Lana has outside to make mud pies in. He was contained for the moment then I started to think. Why did I just go through that? The tomato plants have leaf spot (a fungus) and try as I might I couldn’t get rid of it so I was going to pull up the plants anyway, plus it’s not like they are our favorite vegetable. I was going to have to leave the tomato plants in the ground a few more days just because of what I just went through for them. Lana was outside watching all the action so we the excitement was over and the worm was in a safe place she ran inside to get Kyle and show him then of course then they ask, can we keep him? Knowing how my kids take care of our fish I knew he wouldn’t be around long so I said sure, but we need to find a container for him before he goes into the house. We decided on a water bottle that had a sport top so he could get some air. A few days went by and the worm was not looking so good so Lana decided to shake it. The thing was dead, I felt bad for it even though it did spray me with the green slime, but not bad enough to give it a proper burial and into the trash can it went water bottle and all. A few days went by and I went out to the garden again to pull up the tomato plants. I got the shovel and started to dig them out and then it looked like the ground was moving. I put my shovel down and took a closer look. It was thousand of little black ants. I thought I had dug up their nest, but then I got to the next plant and the same thing happened. I think my 4 ft by 4 ft garden is their whole ant bed. I got the plants out and then got the ant granules, so much for organic gardening. I went inside and had the creepy crawlies for quite a while after, you know where you feel like something is crawling on you but it’s not. I am getting tired of this gardening thing now, but maybe I’ll still try for my fall garden I think there will be fewer bugs.

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