It’s not all glory out there. The garden can be rough at times. Just a little fair warning if you think it is all roses and tomatoes.
Hollyhocks can Hurt.
Yeah, they are splashy, showy and plopped themselves in my garden without my help, initially – easy to grow, little work required. And they even make great toothpick ballerinas, but geesh: they are stickery. If you have to tame them at all, cut them back or dig up the little babies they poop all over the darn place, they will attack you head to toe with the most minute little slivers of scratchiness ever. You can’t see them, no, but you know they are there. And you have to change clothes to go on. Mean.
Never trust the fluttering, white, cabbage-moth.
They flutter. “Oh, lookeeee…” the grandbebes cry with glee. For they think it is a butterfly – a pretty, dancing butterfly. But no, it is not. So while they frolic and zoom about, diving and rolling and having their little party in my garden, they best be warned: I don’t trust them.
Do you know why? Because they will lay eggs from which will come cabbage-white-moth-caterpillars and those little suckers will chew my plants up! They are trying to take control of my vegetables. And having not helped one iota in any of the work of my garden, I am not sorry to say I do not welcome them to enjoy the fruit of my labor. Not at all.
the herbs
The grasshoppers (known sinners) want to rule the land.
Oh, sure, they are cute in the spring when they hop around all sweet and innocent-looking. But they can chew up your plants like nobody’s business, so you should plan your attack early and hard against those boogers. By this time they fly like some attack-helicopter when I approach and could probably give me a concussion if they actually flew into my head. The buzz of their wings is annoyingly loud and they, let me just tell you, are not at all godly like their Praying-Mantis cousins. They are tobacco chewers and spitters, if ever I have seen any, and have quite an attitude at their little meetings where they are most probably planning plagues!
Mama Spiders are bitchy. Oops. I can’t say that. My mom might read this.
Well. They are.
They are building their homes and webs on my plants (eating my bounty), but have no trouble at all telling me where to get off when I water or disrupt them in any fashion. Lucky for them I consider the work they do of value to my kingdom (and I once read about their very likeable cousin in Charlotte’s Web). Or they’d be out, I tell you. Out!
the purple petunias & Guini in the garden
Danger Lurks.
But I am being careful and aware. Don’t worry about me. Just pray for me. Pray a lot.
In the garden where life is fine (albeit dangerous at times)…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Clean-up the daylilies, mulch the peppers a little more for these cooler evenings, talk to the tomatoes, thump on the spaghetti squash, train the unruly beans, pick up the pile of spent hibiscus and weed behind the pool.
