Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Freeze, but the writing is hot!

Okay, last night did it. A hard freeze. We'd spent the weekend pulling out the tomatoes and peppers and a bunch of marigolds, and trimming back some annuals that were scraggly.

I'd seen a really fat, green catapillar on one of the tomato plants and just ignored him - and a few days later, his friend. And in my "Oh, but it's going to be a butterfly or a moth" misplaced sympathy, I decided to leave them on a tomato branch instead of sending them to the yard waste collection.

Then I did a little internet sleuthing. Yep. Tomato hornworms.
So, in 40 mph winds, I hike out to find the critters. The big one was gone, naturally. They burrow into the ground to pupate, which I'm sure is where it is now.

Of course the website I visited suggested "squishing" them as a control method in a small garden; I'd like to see whoever wrote the article "squish" a caterpillar that is 5" long and 1/2" in diameter and has a pointy hook on its rear end.

Daylight savings gives us so much. You really pay for that extra hour of sleep you get on Sunday morning. We're paying because the animals have decided they're not falling back this year, and between the dog woofing and the cat crying at the door, you just may as well get up. Well, today I just ignored the beasts, and in that wonderful state between sleep and awake, plotted two scenes for my new work-in-progress.

Of course this comes on a day when I'm running errands galore and still haven't even opened the document. I have about 35 minutes before it's time to pick up the car from the garage... let's see what I can do!

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