This picture was from a few weeks ago - when FL didn't have extremely cold weather. Now the little beauties are dieing. :(

Mystery worms?

Well, they're not actually worms, but caterpillars. Black, icky caterpillars with yellow stripes and a red head, who eat everything in sight, even the poisonous and most dangerous Angel Trumpet that is in my yard. Seriously! All it's leaves are gone. How sad...

These caterpillars are very annoying. They're all over my tomato plants. There has to be just about a million of them crawling in the grass, resulting in me not being able to go barefoot when I'm outside.

There is so many of these bugs that my sister, upon feeding the horses, found one crawling it's way up her shorts. It even bit her. Yikes, talk about scary!

And the worst thing about this is I have no idea what kind of caterpillars these are....although I have my suspicions...I think they might be Army worms...hm.

Glowing Sunflowers.

A few months back when we had some food in our bird feeder, and it started to rain non-stop for days, the seeds in the feeder started to sprout. I didn't notice at first so everything that sprouted just kept on growing.

When I did notice, there was a ton of grass growing out of the feeder, and also some newly sprouted sunflower seeds. So, curious as I was, I wanted to experiment! I grabbed a few of the sprouted seeds and planted them in some pots, and before I knew it, I had myself some sunflowers growing. There wasn't a lot that I planted, which I regret greatly because I could have let them grow near my bees! (Not that they would have any problems finding the sunflower if it wasn't close to them. I see at least one bee every day in my potted lavender, which is right by the spot that the sunflower is planted.) Oh, how the bees would have just loved the sunflowers planted right near them!

It turned out that two out of the four that I planted died once in the ground because my horses, the nosy creatures, got into the garden patch. (And no, we have not fenced the garden off. It's a wonder that everything else hasn't died from our number of cats and dogs that come and go by the garden each day, unaware of the destruction they are causing.) So, two were trampled. But the other two are still in good condition! In fact, why don't you see for yourself?

I don't know 'bout you, but I think this little darlin' is mighty fine. She's nothing big, although I wish she was! Only about two feet tall. I guess I shouldn't be so sad about her size. I mean, you can't really expect to grow a giant ten foot sunflower when you're getting the seeds from a bird feeder. Haha, I'm also just glad to go through the experience of planting her. And check out that glow on the picture I snapped off? I don't even know how it got like that. Maybe from it being so humid outside, and some condensation got on my lens? Anyways, it sure does compliment her!

Someday I would definitely like to grow giant sunflowers. I saw the GardenGirl do it and now I just can't get it out of my head.

I would also like to plant some sunflowers in my bee yard. That would look pretty and sunflowers are easy to maintain so it wouldn't be any trouble taking care of them over there.

Ant Control

Today, after swimming at the Y with my brother and sisters, I came home and decided to water my tomato plants, which I've recently planted in the ground. As I go out I see this giant ant pile right next to one of the plants. One of my plants was completely covered in dirt from the ant pile.

I wonder if that could become a problem, and so I go inside and look it up online. This other person had the same problem as me and got advice saying to drown the ants out.

I did that. It back fired. The ants are now moving on to the other plants because I demolished their old home with water.

I'm going to wait to see what happens tomorrow and if I see that the ants have taken over my other plants, I will put them back into pots and wait until I can get a new location for them.

Maybe I could build some raised beds that I've been dying for?? I was out searching for a fly mask that my horse lost, and in the neighbor's yard I saw that she had some raised beds... Unfair, it is.