Move to California for yourself...

Today is a very nice day.  In all senses of the word.  After all, this is what it looked like outside today while I was working out (which is another reason today was a nice day.  Me working out is a great accomplishment).

While pondering that beautifully scenic vista above, here is some background music, which I dedicate to everybody in my entire family.  (West Coast >> East Coast!  And I miss you, move already!!)

Nice day aside, some lovely things are happening in the garden.  First of all, a third dahlia has bloomed, a lovely fuschia/hot pink type color, my favorite so far!

Three more dahlias are mystery colors and somewhat refusing to produce anything but leaves.  Two are afflicted by a mystery mildew type disease.  But that is a problem for google and I to solve another day, because today, I am feeling pretty good about solving the problem of the nasty green worms.  A couple weeks ago, I went to the garden store and bought quite a lot of loot, feeling bad about the fact that it felt like my entire garden was failing (really, it was those green worms eating away at my happiness).  While there, a nice garden store man told me about something google failed to mention, which is that there is an organic pesticide called spinosad that is like the sarin of insects -- both act via hyperexcitation of the nervous system.  That made me feel a little bad to attack these possibly innocent hungry insects with a neurotoxin...  but only for a second until I looked at all the holes in my tomato plant again.

A brief side note about the tomato plant:  I was walking past Rite Aid this week and there was a dying tomato plant in a small plastic pot for sale with about 35 baby tomatoes on it (yes, they sell plants there, sad-looking ones).  Mine has zero tomato babies, just a few yellow flowers which subsequently wilt and fall off.  My plant is also incapable of supporting it's own weight (thus the life supports).  I'm finding there is significantly more to the hybridized tomato than just the flavor of the tomato...  But at least the worms have been dealt with!

Quarantined to the corner and on life support, but still alive.  Tomatoes to date: zero.

The skinny on spinosad:  As dramatic as the mechanism of action is, it's organic, derived from a type of bacteria called Saccharopolyspora spinosa.  It is fed to dogs and cats to rid them of fleas.  And it's recently been approved for topical use in humans to rid unlucky humans of lice.  Apparently, there is no ill-effect to humans of this chemical, though the bottle states to wait a day before eating whatever you've sprayed.  According to garden store man, use spinosad for chewing bugs (caterpillars, worms, etc) and neem oil for sucking bugs (aphids, whitefly, etc).  The best part of this discovery is....  so far, it seems to have worked!  I sprayed once and the worms are gone!  So I'm quite excited about this new finding.

I've also finally hung the Italian tile in the garden.  It's reminds me of our wonderful vacation every time I look at it, and it's a nice pop of color.  I'm pretty happy with how the garden's looking now. It might not yet be a Better Homes and Garden type garden, but it's significantly better and greener than last year, which was significantly more impressive than any previous years, and that's what's important... Progress!

Where is the tile?  Do you see it?