Man vs. Nature

Web worms, as disgusting as they are unapologetically evil.

A new front has opened in my ongoing struggle against garden pests. Normally this time of year I don't even give the mountain laurel in our backyard a cursory glance. It's a native tree/shrub that tolerates just about anything, including: last summer's near-apocalyptic death drought, random but rare hard freezes, and the combination clay-sand-limestone soil with a pH of about 17 (that's impossibly alkaline for any non-science nerds who have absolutely no desire to get that joke) that our fair Texas Hill Country is known for. But this morning, I tried to get a good shot of our garden with the chicken coop in the background so I was lurking around rarely visited parts of the backyard. To my horror, I found web worms in all of their disgusting glory attacking my favorite maintenance-free plant.

My mountain laurel does not deserve this. No mountain laurel deserves this.

Needless to say, I have rescued my mountain laurel, for now at least, using my favorite pest control method - crushing with my hands. I do wear gloves when crushing these nasty things. Unlike normal caterpillars, web worms do not even get the dignified death of being fed to my chickens. Unfortunately, I never found the time to get a good pic of the mountain laurel in bloom this March. They have purple flowers that hang in clusters like grapes, similar to wisteria, and they smell like Grape Kool-Aid, which apparently turns some people (weirdos, obviously) off.

An epic struggle between nymph and man.

The leaf-footed bug nymphs have also returned, although in smaller numbers. I think I'm making a dent their population. Here's a great shot of me sending one to its maker. It tried to put up a struggle but, between my superior human intellect and overwhelming physical strength, I had him subdued within 15 or 20 minutes.

I will say this for the nymphs, unlike a certain nauseating, web-spinning, insect larvae, they don't take being crushed sitting down. They at least have the sense to run and hide. And, of course, they are the most dapper of the garden pests I've dealt with thus far.

So, I'll leave you with the picture I mentioned at the beginning of my latest narcissistic and pointless rambling. This is a shot of the veggie garden inside a chicken/duck proof fence (they don't realize they can fly) with the hen house and coop in the background. The coop is covered with some Carolina jasmine vines that have gone a bit nuts thanks to their frequent soakings by our duck Patrick as he happily splashes around in his Rubbermaid duck pond.

Posting may be somewhat lighter the next few days (but check back multiple times daily anyway) because we're preparing for what I'm now calling The Barbeque of the Millennium. I would say of the Era, but I want to manage expectations. I can promise to you, my faithful blog audience, that this BBQ will be worth some lean posts the next day or two because we should get plenty of photos of yours truly trying not to die of an anxiety attack caused by people being at my house who are trying to pretend to have a good time despite being humped by one of our dogs (They're both girls but, yes, they still hump). And who knows, maybe I'll have time to post a little here and there while Travis works his fingers to the bone.