New Gardens = )

I know that the summer is winding down. I won't have many more weeks of posting pictures of my learning experience that I call a garden before I have to clean and oil my tools and tuck all the plants in for the winter. I will not despair though because I look forward to hours of daydreaming while looking out over a snow covered yard, and thinking of all the things I want to improve for next year. I also have armchair gardening to look forward too. This go around Amy and I can expand our circle and invite Liz and Vicci, who have recently acquired gardens of their own, to dream and scheme with us! I see a snowy Saturday afternoon of gardening books, catalogues, wine and friendship; and husbands who will all be running as fast as they can to get out of the house!
When the girls acquired their gardens, I told them that I would be available to help them get their gardens growing. I so enjoy helping other people have their own little gardens of Eden, especially if I get to help with all the fun planning and picking of stuff and leave them to do all the day to day trimming and weeding! I have even been contemplating what kind of horticultural education I would have to undertake in order to successfully start a business to teach people not lucky enough to have a mom or friend who is willing to pass along gardening knowledge. I even had a great name... the Garden Tutor. Of course my inspiration of being the first person to think of being the savior of gardeners who can't quite get their gardens to grow because they have no idea what they are doing, with a great business name and plan were dashed when I searched "garden tutor" and actually came up with 2 other businesses with the name and the plan that I came up with. On the negative side, I am not the first person to think of this, on the positive side, neither of the companies were in the Philadelphia area, and they are apparently doing well enough to post current portfolio pictures on their websites. There must be a need for this service... I will just have to come up with an even more clever name.
Off to check and see what goodies the roof has produced today...

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

The evil green sausages have returned to the garden!! This time I only found one, but it looks like I caught it just in time, it had what looked like little white eggs/cocoons on its back. No mercy for this girl, I hope I got all of the babies when I scooped her up and deposited her in the garbage can Fingers crossed there aren't baby evil green sausages waiting in the soil of the buckets waiting to emerge next year and nibble their way through the tomatoes!
I wonder where she has been hiding all this time. I know tomato worms are remarkable similar in color to tomato plants, but at more than 2" long and bigger around than a pencil, you would think I would see the thing before it showed up with a hoard of eggs!
I had to laugh though, as much as I dislike the critters, if you look at them from the back end, they have a single horn and a nose shaped rear that kind of makes them look like a little unicorn. That "nose" and horn make a good camouflage and protection. I have seen one before, and know what their heads look like, and yet when I saw the horn and "nose" I thought I was looking at its head!