Char's Gardening"As the Garden Grows, so does the Gardener"

Headed to superbowl party!  Taking betting board and desert!  Go Steelers!!!

Look what came in the mail!

My parents live in a retirement center in central florida.  The property boasts a great citrus crop, many times more then the residence can eat.  This time some of the excess came to me. Thanks mom and dad!

I seem to have a dilemma.  I went out to the garden this morning and noticed a caterpillar on one of my tomato plants.  Turns out it is a Tomato Hornworm, I can’t believe I have never seen one of these.  Even more then that, how did it get this big without my noticing it?   So I figure it’s already this big, how much bigger can it get?    Surely it will cocoon soon or at least not do too much more damage.  So when I got home this evening I look at said culprit and there it is.  I’m not positive but it looks bigger and more leaves have been eaten.  So here in lies my dilemma, to kill or not to kill.  It just seems wrong to kill this caterpillar, okay I know it will only turn into a moth, but I don’t think I have the heart.   I guess I can just hope it will not eat my entire plant, because that would hurt my feelings.

Tomato Hornworm in the Morning

Proof!

Tomato Hornworm in the Evening

Tomato Hornworm moth Image from Jerrysplantsonline.com

Thanks to the Flower Lady for bringing this to my attention.  The city of Philadelphia is charging bloggers $300 for a “privilege” license.  If cities across the nation follow suit this could bring our blogosphere down.  Read the entire article here.

It seems that I am on my two week anniversary of starting my blog.  I must admit that I did not check out other gardeners blogs before jumping in head first to start my own.  I didn’t really think any one would find my blog for a very long time, so I figured I had plenty of time to putter around and figure out exactly what direction this blog would take.  But to my surprise and delight a few people have seen my blog and some even commented, wow thanks!!

In the past two weeks I have read more blogs especially garden blogs, then I ever  knew existed, okay sometimes I live under a rock.  One post I read “Someday is a Dangerous Word” has just stayed with me.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe because I have a milestone birthday approaching or maybe it’s just time to act.  Here are a few of my “somedays” that I feel now is the time to take care of:

Someday I will do all my gardening organically.  I do a large portion organically already just haven’t been able to cross that final line.

Someday I will become a Master Gardener.  This class is in the  winter and come hell or high water I will be there.

Someday I will try to grow most of my own food, now this is a big one for me.  I have for many years had what I would like to consider a successful summer garden, but now I want to turn that into a 4 season garden.

I will be following with blogs chronicling my journey to the organic side and what, I hope, will become  my self sustaining garden.

As I went out into the garden this morning with my dog Kahlo and cup of coffee in hand, I thought I would take a few pictures to chronicle the day.   After going in to retrieve my camera and learn how to use the different settings, back out we went to see what would be interesting.

Kahlo thought she would help by smelling the Dwarf Mexican Petunia.  Now, talk about a plant that can survive it all, these little guys are great.

The Gerber Daisy and our garden guest didn’t seem to mind the sweltering heat, though Kahlo and I promptly returned inside.

Welcome to my blog.  As this is my first post I thought it would be fitting to reflect on what or maybe I should say who inspired my love of gardening. To do this I must give an abbreviated story of my childhood.  I grew up in Bolivia, South America, on one of the many tributaries of the Amazon River.   My parents were Baptist Missionaries.  Bolivia is a third world country so in order to get on education I went away to boarding school.  My memories of gardening came from my mom, who whenever I came home would have flowers planted wherever she could.  Down there we didn’t have plant nurseries, or WalMart where you could just go buy plants.  No, everything was started either from seeds or cuttings my mom would gather on her travels.  I don’t recall, doing much of any gardening myself as a child,  just how much my mom loved flowers.   After high school I returned to the United States.  Once I had my own place my brother came to visit and noticed my bed of Sunflowers and Zinnias and told my, “you are your mothers daughter”.     So mom, thanks you for passing the love of gardening on to me.