She appears as a funky, whimsical horticultural ocean liner. Upside down on a Brandywine leaf, she's dead in the water. For a garden pest, she's a behemoth, unsinkable, I'd say. Carrying over one hundred passengers, dressed in cocoons, she is the Titanic, and this cruise is over. Death stalls this caterpillar, like so many others I have seen in the garden. In fact, I have yet to see a plain green horned tomato worm without its parasitic entourage. They are all playing host to the wasps. I leave this poor, dying worm alone, waiting the wasps to hatch and do it all over again.
Speaking of ill-fated voyages, Debbie and I have planned on a mere, "three hour tour," in the garden on a gorgeous Sunday. Unfortunately, we become lost in a sea of unruly, and prolific tomato plants. Because there is so much fruit on the vines, we need to weed, locate each trailing vine, tie it as best we can and then use the stake as a center upon which to lift the fruit off of the ground. Of our hundred fifty tomato plants, we likely pruned and tie about forty. Our three hours turn into eight.
We spend another hour weeding and harvesting cucumbers. The cukes never seem to stop bearing. Debbie is upset because some of them have a little etching on the skin.
"Come on, we're not using pesticide."
"Your point?" she asks.
"Well, I think they're in great shape for field specimens."
"Your point?"
"People peel cucumbers. Our customers don't expect perfect waxed plastic!"
We harvest in silence for a few minutes, and then I find a cucumber that's in pretty bad shape.
"Josh?" I call to Debbie."
"Yes, Brent," she calls back. We joke a lot about Planet Green's latest reality show, "The Fabulous Beekman Boys," featuring ex-drag queen, Josh and his partner, Brent: doctor turned farmer.
"I cannot save this cucumber."
"Oh, don't cry, Brent," she says. "Farmer John will save it." Last week, Farmer John was seen crying, "She's my favorite goat," after he did a digital breech delivery on one of his star-power goats. Brent and Josh tend to cry uncontrollably when they have to witness the slaughter of, say, their hogs, "Porky and Bess."
Honestly, I would find it difficult to raise livestock for slaughter. Not sure how to be that kind of farmer.
As we're about to leave, I call to Deb, "Hey, look, Deb... the corn is growing antennas." Like kids in the park, we run over to the corn patch, and as I later learn, the corn is growing tassels. Tracy Deluca writes in Ehow.com that:
"A corn tassel is the male flower of the corn plant. The tassel is a group of stemmy flowers that grow at the apex, or top, of the corn stalk. These tassels are shades of yellow, green and purple. Each corn plant will grow this tassel on top after the major growing of the plant is complete and when it is time for the ears of corn to begin growing."
Tiring day. After we load the cucumbers and tomatoes into the car, we drive to Buttonwood Farm, ten mile up on Route 201 . There we enjoy an ice cream cone watching fifty head of beef cattle devour a sunflower field.
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