Agriculture sucks!

As I'm sure you were all aware, I planted a bunch of squash as the vine borers are supposedly NOT laying eggs at this time. What a crock! They took out 6 out of 9 plants! I still have one zucchini, one lemon squash and one pumpkin, we'll see if they manage to survive or not. My garden has been overrun with aphids. Who would have thought such little bugs could make such a HUGE mess of things! Little BASTARDS! Then the other morning I went out to find one of my golden boy tomatoes half-eaten. It looked liked someone took a big bite out of it. I was thinking maybe a raccoon or birds or maybe even a bat, I didn't know. I left it alone and the next morning, went out to find the tomato right next to it looking the same way, like someone had come and taken a huge bite of it! UGH, what was up?!?! Then I got to really looking at the plant and the bed and there it was, the telltale sign... LOADS of caterpillar poop! OH NOOOOO! I searched that vine from top to bottom and could find nothing. So I came inside and looked up tomato worms on the internet. Not that I don't know what one looks like, I remember my mom picking them out of the garden and squishing them with sticks as a kid, I know... gross! But I just needed to refresh my mind and maybe see how they hide, if it was UNDER leaves or next to stalks or what. After that I went outside and found the little culprit within a matter of minutes, hanging out, fat as could be! Of course my first instinct was to throw him on the ground and squish him, but if you know me, you know I have a problem killing things (OK, squash borers, aphids and cockroaches aside), so what does any card-carrying homeschooler mom do??? She grabs the butterfly habitat, cuts off some of the tomato vine and transfers giganto Tomato Horntail Caterpillar into the enclosure. We will have one of two outcomes, he will either eat lots of leaves and tomatoes I'm willing to share and turn into a chrysalid that is bound to become a 5-spotted Hawkmoth or he will keel over and die if he has been parasitized by a wasp. Either way, great biology! If he becomes a hawkmoth, he will be observed for a day, then humanely released FAR away from MY garden! And of course, you can't keep something and not name it. He has been dubbed "Ernie" by the Monkey Man. Ernie the Tomato Horntail, with such an evil name for a caterpillar, I was thinking more along the lines of "Severus" or "Beelzebub" mostly since that thing was hell on my tomatoes! But Ernie it is.

I hate seeing the crumpled leaves, telltale sign of aphids!


Stinkin' aphids!


Victimized Golden Boys!


The culprit...