A Tomato Hornworm Munching Away on the Peppers

July 12, 2025

***Warning Dog Poop Picture in Post***

On July 1 (Tuesday), I discovered a tomato hornworm had been munching on three of my pepper plants. It had eaten part of some peppers and several leaves down to the stems. I caught it in the act of munching and sentenced it to death by squishing.

I had PT that Tuesday. While I was in PT, Bruce went to Rural King and found Japanese beetle traps. He bought one to try.

In the evening, we harvested the first potato bin. It was very sad. I think we got about as much from the harvest as I bought as seed potatoes. Lesson learned; don’t try to grow potatoes with leaves instead of straw. Next year, I am going to try the bin approach, but with straw. I am also going to grow most of the potatoes using the trench method.

On July 2 (Wednesday), I carried my spray bottle of soapy water out to the garden in the morning. This allowed me to be ready to deal with the squash bugs as soon as possible. I had to spray several squash plants to deal with the tiny nymph stage of squash bugs. I also discovered more squash bug eggs to squish.

When I was trimming trees on June 30th, in the fence row with the loppers, as one of the big branches toppled, revealing a wasp nest in the tree. I didn’t get a picture then, but I got one on July 2nd.

I had PT on Wednesday instead of Thursday. I was very sore afterwards. My new physical therapist has me doing different exercises. She also did a lot of manipulations to understand my problem better.

We had a glorious sunset. It started simple, then became incredible. From incredible, it faded to twilight, then night. The fireflies put on a wonderful show in conjunction with the sunset.

On July 3 (Thursday), I went to get the poop scoop to clean up after Nox’s morning poop stop. I was surprised to discover a Red Admiral butterfly on the poop.

Bruce and I put up one Japanese bottle trap around lunchtime.

I was able to join my book club meeting since the PT didn’t interfere with the meeting.

I put the larger watermelons in slings to support them. If you look at the picture above, you can see some of the watermelons before they were placed in slings.

Here’s a tomato I picked.

With all the rain we’ve had, the tomatoes keep splitting.

I put Nox in a chair for a photo shoot.

I was astonished to see how full the Japanese beetle trap was in just one afternoon.

The sunset was simple, but still lovely.