Poison Day

Dear Friends,

This morning I am glad I had been out bright and early, for If I hadn't been, who knows what atrocities may have happened?

I stood outside to guard my garden and livestock with spade and shovel in hand, dirty kneed from garden work, standing defensively with a look of determination and a bit of terror on my face. I planted my feet firmly in the way. "No herbicide here needed!" I exclaimed to the balding, pale, thin man in the golf-cart like vehicle with the big tank full of poison that had been going up and down the streets spraying the asphalt cracks. "Look, no need, there's no weeds in the cracks here!" He backed down...moved on and continued spraying recklessly in front of my neighbors, whether there were weeds in the cracks or not. He was very wise not to mess with the fed up crazy woman with the strange hat and garden tools. I didn't back down until I could hear his noisy little contraption going down another block to spread his poisons around.

Meanwhile, the hens found my distraction a good time to raid tomatoes while I wasn't paying attention to them. I can't fault them a few tomatoes though, they are pretty good. I shooed them from the vegetable garden and got to work on the pumpkin vines, cutting back vines which were useless with no pumpkins on them. I began cutting them up into bite sized pieces for the compost. Last year I didn't cut them up, I threw them in whole, which was a mistake as they were fibrous, stringy and took forever to break down, even with copious amounts of rabbit poop mixed in. As I was cutting, i noticed on every leaf, an army of red insect eggs. Pretty fascinating if I didn't know they were trouble. I had never seen so many squash bug eggs in my LIFE. Some batches had just hatched, confused and bewildered baby bugs still grouped together didn't know what to do as their world collapsed around them. "Here Chick chick chicks!" Henrieta feather bottom comes running, I hold out the baby bugs on a leaf platter. She tilts her funny red head one way then the other. Pecks at one of the eggs, tries it again and loses interest. Waddling back over to where her companion is working on a ruined tomato. I returned the leaf to the compost pile. I guess it will be the spiders getting fat on them instead. That's OK too, so long as somebody eats them.

Speaking of getting fat, I harvested my last cabbage today. Its a savoy cabbage with very crinkly leaves. Its amazing how big the plant got. It took up a LOT of space. Most of the outside leaves were ruined by caterpillars and grasshoppers, and next year I am going to have to do something about it. Certainly I can find an organic solution to my pest problem? I mean, other then toads...two of which I found living in the leaves of this cabbage likely getting fat off the caterpillars. I appreciate their efforts, but most of the cabbage ended up in the compost so I'm going to have to do something more.

Well, thats it for now!

Have a great day.

Nickie