I find a lot of bugs in the garden.
There was a hole in one of our squash. When I cut it open, I found this guy inside:
Later, while picking tomatoes, I found this caterpillar:
I put it in a jar for safekeeping until I could check the internet to see if it was a tomato-eater. Then I found this one:
According to the internet, they’re both tomato hornworms. The second caterpillar is covered with parasitic wasp cocoons. The wasps will eat the caterpillar when they emerge from their cocoons. The internet recommends I leave the wasp-infested caterpillar in the garden so the wasps will kill other hornworms when they hatch. Go wasps!
We visited John & Helanna & Yofi & the chickens this weekend. John & Hanny’s chickens laid their first egg. And it’s green!
This is our front yard. We never got around to doing much in the front. Janie put in the boxes and (tiny) blueberry bushes. There’s a rhubarb patch in there, but it’s hard to see. The squirrels and birds planted the sunflowers. We never really planned on having a yard, so I (Brad) refuse to buy any sort of lawn mowing device. I figure, next year we’ll plant something that doesn’t require mowing. So this year, the yard looks a little rough.
This is how we trim it. Seriously. It’s not as bad as it looks. Today, one of our neighbors saw me hacking at the yard with my clippers and came over with a special present he found in the garbage (how did he know we like things out of the garbage?).
Works like a champ (once you use the clippers to hack the grass down to a reasonable height). I forgot to take an “after” photo. Imagine: the yard looks better, but still doesn’t look good.
Any suggestions for the front yard for next year? It’s a southern exposure so a moss garden is out (sorry Becky). We like: edible things, (relatively) low maintenance, & conceptual art.
