So I know I've been behind on updating, but I have at least been taking photos roughly every 15 days. I had this hankering to do a sort of time-lapse view of my garden growing. (Not so cool as if it were a daily thing, or even if I'd bothered to take the photos at the same time of day, but there you have it.) Can you believe how much things grow in just 15 days!?
Beginning with June to mid August
Side Garden View 1
Side Garden View 2
Tomatoes along the fence
Our garden is doing pretty well. There are lots of green tomatoes and we've had a few Matt's Wild cherry ripen enough to eat. When I say a few, I mean it...enough for each of us to have one to taste, well actually Lily had two - so it's technically one more than a few. That taste made me excited for more, and the fact that Lily liked it - even more excited! Anything that gets that girl to eat something healthy is exciting! Just hoping they make it to ripen! - more on that in a second...
We've also been eating zucchini, of course - that's something anybody can grow easily and plentifully! And spinach, carrots, and some green onions. The regular onions are growing well, and I also picked my first pea pod and got my first taste of my own garden peas! Peas have been my favorite straight-from-the-garden-thing since my first taste of my Grandma's as a kid! I planted more when I put up my trellis, and am hoping they thrive, because it's still a relatively small amount of peas. You can bet next year I will be devoting more space to them (given that we are still here or somewhere we can have a garden). The potatoes were a disappointment, but overall our garden makes me happy.
When it isn't giving us nightmares, anyway...
Green things have been growing in our garden, but not all of them are desirable. I'm not talking weeds - I'm talking creepy crawly caterpillars. So just the other day I discovered a tiny brown caterpillar on some of the tomato plants that are growing in pots behind our main garden.
Well, worms and most bugs have always grossed/freaked me out. Ants are fine as long as they don't bite me or invade my house. I kill spiders no problem, but only because the thought of them crawling around loose somewhere in my vicinity scares me more than just squishing them. Mike kills spiders, but sometimes he just catches harmless spiders and bugs and lets them go outside. I've never even liked to play with roly-polies. I remember as a kid not even wanting to touch the page if there was a picture in a book of something I considered disgusting. Sometimes I do think about how bugs are God's creations too, and feel a little bad because really they may be just as important and loved by God as I am, so when they are doing their thing outside I usually just leave them alone, but if any bug is on my turf - I don't have too much sympathy for it.
So anyway, I got a rock and a twig or something like that to pick that little caterpillar off my tomato plant, because no way was I going to touch it with my bare fingers... I just couldn't squish it - ew! But I didn't want it eating up my garden so I tossed it over the fence rock, twig and all. At least I tried tossing it - it was not the greatest throw because of my squeamishness - so that sucker is probably right back where he started from this minute. Anyway, the reason I was back there in the first place was to check out a few tomatoes that were starting to turn red. I looked them over and found the bottoms of all the red ones were rotten - bummer. Then, as I was looking for more bad tomatoes to pick off, I noticed a green tomato that was half eaten...and next to it - something that made me jump back in fear and disgust and sent a shudder all through my body. I ran into the house - to get my camera of course. These are the best pictures I could get, because my disgust at the sight of them would only let me get so close. But just so you know - these huge green beasts were fatter around than my thumb and much longer than any of my fingers. That was a good sized tomato you see pictured there. Click to Zoom. Ew.
Well, worms and most bugs have always grossed/freaked me out. Ants are fine as long as they don't bite me or invade my house. I kill spiders no problem, but only because the thought of them crawling around loose somewhere in my vicinity scares me more than just squishing them. Mike kills spiders, but sometimes he just catches harmless spiders and bugs and lets them go outside. I've never even liked to play with roly-polies. I remember as a kid not even wanting to touch the page if there was a picture in a book of something I considered disgusting. Sometimes I do think about how bugs are God's creations too, and feel a little bad because really they may be just as important and loved by God as I am, so when they are doing their thing outside I usually just leave them alone, but if any bug is on my turf - I don't have too much sympathy for it.
So anyway, I got a rock and a twig or something like that to pick that little caterpillar off my tomato plant, because no way was I going to touch it with my bare fingers... I just couldn't squish it - ew! But I didn't want it eating up my garden so I tossed it over the fence rock, twig and all. At least I tried tossing it - it was not the greatest throw because of my squeamishness - so that sucker is probably right back where he started from this minute. Anyway, the reason I was back there in the first place was to check out a few tomatoes that were starting to turn red. I looked them over and found the bottoms of all the red ones were rotten - bummer. Then, as I was looking for more bad tomatoes to pick off, I noticed a green tomato that was half eaten...and next to it - something that made me jump back in fear and disgust and sent a shudder all through my body. I ran into the house - to get my camera of course. These are the best pictures I could get, because my disgust at the sight of them would only let me get so close. But just so you know - these huge green beasts were fatter around than my thumb and much longer than any of my fingers. That was a good sized tomato you see pictured there. Click to Zoom. Ew.
Ew.
Ew!
I don't even want to know how close I got to this guy while taking a picture of his friend in the first photo - I didn't notice him at first, but I know he made an appearance in Mike's dreams that night after Mike did the dirty job of disposing of at least 5 of these tomato eaters.
2 comments:
Cool progression pics!! That's kind of what I had in mind for my own garden but since we didn't have much in the way of growing stuff, it didn't come out. Oh, well, gardening in the desert is definitely a difficult skill to acquire.
Ugh, the caterpillars are grossing me out! Normally they don't bug me but those made me shiver.
Evie would have LOVED to see and hold that BEEFY caterpillar!!
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