We have a new enemy

This morning, while macing my tomatoes in a futile attempt to ward off squirrels, I discovered a brand new pest to complain about. This is fortunate for the blog-reading public because this would otherwise be another "introducing my chickens" kind of post. 

And before I forget, it's a Tuesday, which is my day off (one of many), and that means gardening cocktails! This morning was an exercise in improvisation because we wiped out our liquor stores at The BBQ of the Millennium. I went with a (superior) variation of the tequila sunrise - gold tequila and cranberry juice. I'm pretty sure we've never run out of tequila. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure we've ever even run low on tequila in our liquor cabinet. It's about priorities.

Our newest creature bent on garden-wide destruction falls somewhere between normal voracious caterpillar and cringe-inducingly disgusting webworm on my scale of larval grossness.

Without further ado, I give you tomato pinworm:

Not webworm gross, but still pretty nasty.

I had to take this picture with the flash because of the dark clouds covering the sun this morning. In any normal place that would probably mean rain. Not here. 

But, I digress. You can see that this pinworm has contrived a little fortress around himself. He was completely enclosed in it just before I took this photo. It causes the leaves to fold up. This is convenient for gardeners (especially gardeners who blog and like to pretend that they have to hurry up and post to satisfy their adoring fans) because 1) it's easy to spot a folded leaf and 2) they are already half-way to crushing themselves, leaving less work for me.

Because this blog is largely meant to be informative for gardeners the world over, I've also included a picture of a folded leaf that alerts astute gardeners to the presence of tomato pinworms:

A tomato pinworm rests comfortably in his folded leaf house oblivious to his approaching demise.

After dealing with the tomato pinworms, I scoured the rest of the garden for new blog-worthy bugs. All I came up with were a few webworms waiting to be crushed on the mountain laurel. However, I did have one more gardening experience worth mentioning this morning. 

In the Whitt-White house, our thumbs are so green we can grow things without even trying. Case in point, these sweet yellow onions in our kitchen up and sprouted with no encouragement or inducement by us:

Nature finds a way

These are from a couple of weeks ago. I figured they already have a head start so why not plant them. The planted onions have grown surprisingly well. So well, in fact, that when a few more sprouted recently, I decided to plant them as well (when I got around to it). I got around to it this morning.

The older ones are on the left, the newest is on the right. I have a few more scattered around the garden wherever there was space (not pictured).

Experimental grocery store onions