In many ways, Alexis is a miniature version of me. That's why it's not really surprising that she's a fan of gardening. She happily pulls weeds (don't bother to ask for her help--she does it, but she doesn't do it well). She will diligently water every last plant in the yard. She is a beast with a pair of pruners. Most of all, though, she loves to plant seeds.
Somewhere around the last week of June, Alexis conned me into buying a zillionth pack of seeds. I didn't even really look at them because I was too busy rolling my eyes at how the kid had been the victim of some crazy marketing scheme. The seeds were Sesame Street brand and had Abby Cadabby's face plastered all over the packet. We already had a huge pile of seeds to plant, but I let her have them anyway. While she's a sucker for Sesame Street, I'm a sucker for her asking nicely.
We planted the seeds in the ground and exactly five days later, the Abby Cadabby Pumpkins sprouted.
You'll have to trust me that they are over there on the left, right behind the tomato cages.
Apparently, Abby Cadabby sprinkled some magic in that seed packet because HOLY RAVIOLI, those suckers are now threatening to take over the universe:
All told, I think the pumpkin patch is about 20 feet long and 8 feet wide. All that, in one month's time.
I'm kinda thinking we don't need quite THAT many pumpkins (they're mini ones, which means they're sort of useless for carving and the sort), so I spent about an hour the other night ripping some of them out (the photo was taken AFTER the carnage . . . that's how insane they have grown). Along my way, I happened to glance at the tomato plants and spotted this:
While I maintain that things with more than four legs are gross, that little bug was actually kind of cool looking. I took some time to take a few thousand photos before relocating it to the field behind our house. Since I'm a superdork, I even looked up what it was--a Tobacco Hornworm. I can now tell you that the difference between a Tomato Hornworm and a Tobacco Hornworm is the horn's color. I'm all fancy and smart and stuff now. You're welcome.
Fast forward a day and I pulled into the driveway and immediately spotted carnage. The previously huge tomato plants had been nearly totally mowed down. I found four new Tobacco Hornworms in there (definitely new because they were much bigger . . . and much grosser). I relocated them and then took their invasion as a declaration of war.
I dumped half a container of pesticide all over that part of the garden. So what if Alexis eats the tomatoes right off the plant, right? A little pesticide never hurt anyone. Much.
(Honestly, I *hate* using pesticide. The little prickers left me no choice when they declared war.)
Anyway, today as Alexis and I pulled into the driveway, she asked to see if there were any "Alice cappalillers." At some point during the Tobacco Hornworm invasion, I had pointed out to Alexis that the things look like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, so she was a bit obsessed with them. She has no interest in actually touching one, but she will stare for several minutes. We headed over to the tomato plants to see if any had returned.
As we walked over, I warned Alexis that I had put some "yucky stuff" on the plants to ward off the bugs. There was some 'splaining to do, but I think she figured out that if she wants to eat tomatoes this summer, she has to deal with a lack of Alice cappalillers. Maybe.
OK, maybe not.
Once she was certain that there really weren't any Alice cappalillers, Alexis looked me straight in the eye and asked if we could go buy some capaliller seeds. She wants to plant them right next to the pumpkins.
