unwelcome visitor

We recently had another unexpected and fairly unwelcome visitor to our backyard garden. I was at work at the time and got a "what should I do?" type phone call from Olivia. This came at an extremely busy and stressful time in my job (there have been an awful lot of those lately) and I was probably less helpful with how to deal with another weird worm in the garden. I was told that he was really "cute".

I was pretty sure from the start that this was not a friend no matter his appearance and when Olivia described the suspect, we discovered that we had a tomato hornworm. These are the larva of the beneficial Five Spotted Hawk Moth but, they are destructive to our tomatoes so, they had to go. As we are now squash-less and zucchini-less thanks to the S.V.B.s (Squash Vine Borers), we don't need to lose any more of our produce. This is especially true considering all the time and energy that have gone into the garden to this point. What I was probably unprepared for was the sheer size of this worm. I am not real squeamish when it comes to squishing bugs and apparently, I am also less likely to make friends with them than Olivia. All told, we were less ready to handle this visitor than we could have been.

My poor wife "dealt" with the tomato hornworm as best as she could by throwing a large rock down onto it and then nearly vomited. I might have been able to be a little more casual about it than that but, no such luck. I have since done some follow up research and found that as already stated, the adult moth is a valuable pollinator for a variety of plants and if you can find a neighbor to unwittingly harbor the hornworm until metamorphosis takes place(thanks 5th grade science!) not a bad backyard visitor. But, the larval form...the worm is not beneficial as it will slowly devastate your tomato or pepper plants. The worms are huge, move slowly and blend in to the foliage of your plants very well. One tip I've read is that under black light, these worms fluoresce or glow and can be easily spotted and picked off. They are also apparently irresistible to ducks so, in the interest of continuing to be a green "weirdo", the next time we find tomato hornworms in our garden, I'll be in the yard, at night, with a black light, picking huge glowing worms off the plants, and then feeding them to the nearest group of ducks I can find.

just before the smashing In the meantime, it has been pretty cool to enjoy what we have been growing made into a couple of varieties of home-made salsa, tomato sauces and other fresh spices and seasonings to help feed our growing "Food Network" habit.

our three tomato plants worked overtime last week these were all picked within three days ~so, we are constantly playing with tomato recipes.

working on our homemade Crema Sauce

our guacamole, salsa & Crema Sauce

our first try at Salsa ~ a fire roasted salsa our second try at salsa. this one is more of a fresh salsa - no cooking involved. a Mint & Cilantro dip. the red flakes are Serrano peppers (some of our Serrano peppers turned out red). for a snack ~ Triscuit crackers topped with tomatoes (of course!) feta cheese & fresh basil.

tomato mozzarella salad with fresh basil and oregano