Friday, August 8, 2008

bugs in my garden

I don't really have much of a garden. We are renting this house so we've chosen not to till up any of the yard. We do have a brick planter on the back deck which I have tried to turn into a garden. I've got two hot pepper plants, one salsa pepper plant, two bell pepper plants, two tomato plants, three cucumber plants and various herbs. My mom has always had a garden as long as I can remember but this is my first attempt. So when I first saw the horned worm I thought, cool, that's going to be a butterfly or a pretty moth. Little did I know that such a small cute little worm could eat my entire collection of pepper plants. Every leaf stripped from the stem. My biggest best (and only) bell pepper half eaten. My tomatoes with nasty gaping holes in them. And EVERY single hot pepper gone. As if they never existed. This worm had an enormous appetite. Then two more little worms appeared. It was too much to handle. So as much as I wanted to give the little guys access to my all night diner, I had to give them the heave-ho. I actually made my husband pull them off and throw them in the yard. I thought for sure they'd come crawling back but since then I have seen no sign of the them. Although I still haven't grown another bell pepper everything else seems to be doing fine. I've gotten several tomatoes with more on the way and my peppers are doing great. I'm still waiting to see what the cucumbers are going to do. At least now I know that no matter how cute a horn worm may be my garden is no place for them. Oh, and then there is this spider. He doesn't seem to be a threat, infact he caught that beetle that might have gorged on some the garden's leaves. Ah bugs, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

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