Earth Day everyday

I hope everyone had a great Earth Day yesterday and observed it with the appropriate amount of solemnity and decorum that our planet deserves. How many other planets get their own holiday with droll, overpriced t-shirts? 

Salud!

I celebrated by sitting quietly in my house with the blinds closed and the lights off, recovering from our Earth Day Eve BBQ. The BBQ was a complete success, as you can see from this photo. The best part of nearly constant gardening is the look of amazement, or at least a look of bemusement, on the face of our guests when they see in person what many of you can only read about and see in my pictures. This party didn't disappoint on that front. I even plucked a nasturtium flower and proved to a group of friends that they are, in fact, edible (Sorry for the allergic reaction, Krystal).

After the festivities of the weekend, it's back to the grind of gardening and garden-related bug killing. I'm sure you will all be happy to know that my mountain laurel is on it's way to recovery after the completely unprovoked web worm assault. I think I've killed every last one of them. 

During the morning inspection I snapped this picture of a cluster of mountain laurel seed pods, which are apparently hallucinogenic but also, unfortunately, extremely poisonous. I guess that's Mother Nature's way of keeping the Native Americans (who used them for sacred spiritual rituals like Burning Man) on their toes. The seeds are also called mescal beans but don't actually contain mescal, which is a shame.

Mescal bean pods: do not eat them (unless you like to have fun)

In other old business, I think I know why my former arch-nemesis, the leaf-footed bug nymphs, suddenly disappeared. I had assumed it was because they read this blog and were frightened by my plan to vacuum them. I think this picture suggests a more likely explanation. The leaf-footed bug nymphs have grown into strapping, young leaf-footed bugs. They grow so fast. I guess we'll always have the memories. This one got away before I could smash him. Unlike the nymphs, the adults can actually fly. 

It seems like just yesterday that I was crushing all of this little guy's friends and loved ones.

But now that I've seen an adult leaf-footed bug, I'll be on the lookout. If they prove difficult to kill with my own hands, I may have to up the ante a bit. I'm already planning for this contingency, but I don't want to give away the details now in case I need the material for some blog post in the future. Always have an ace in the hole.