Tobacco Hornworms

     This morning as I was picking some lovely tomatoes from my garden when I spied a green caterpillar-looking creature eating the tender new leaves of a tomato plant.  The critters can be seen in this photo I took. They are in the upper middle to left of the photo.  After consulting my sister (a more experienced gardener than myself), I determined they are tobacco hornworms.  My sister said to remove them and squish them, which I did.  And there were LOTS of them, too.

 
    Tobacco hornworms and their relative, tomato hornworms, can decimate a plant in short order, so I will be checking for more each day for the rest of the season.   To learn more about Tobacco Hornworms, visit this website:

http://growyourtomatoes.com/hornworm.html

Earthquake!

     Tuesday afternoon I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, working at my computer.  Suddenly, my monitor began to wobble and a bookcase began shaking and hitting the wall.  In fact, the whole room shook a little bit.  It didn't last long, but it was something I'd never felt before.  Others in my house felt it, too.  We quickly found out it was an earthquake!

     The eipcenter of the earthquake was in Mineral, VA.  This 5.8 quake was felt as far north as Canada, and as far south as South Carolina, maybe even into Georgia; as far west as Ohio and all through the New England states.  We felt some tremors here afterwards and there have been aftershocks, too.  This was  the strongest earthquake to hit the east coast since 1944 when one took place in New York.

     Helicopters flew around the Washington Monument soon after the quake, looking for damage, and sure enough they found some cracks in the upper portion of the monument.  The monument is closed for now.

Summer is Not Over Yet!

I haven't posted in a bit.  The summer has been zooming by, but it is not over yet!  Hurricane season peaks in a few weeks and we might be in for a hurricane visit later this week.  Irene is expected to make landfall somewhere on the Atlantic seaboard.

A few weeks ago, our family vacationed at Sunset Beach, NC.  The view was outstanding and I was able to identify a bird I had not seen before - Boat-tailed Grackle.  We also saw mockingbirds, red-winged blackbirds, some kind of swallow, mourning doves, some kind of gull, pelicans, egrets, starlings and cardinals.  Who knew cardinals lived at the beach!  We also saw bunnies and some kind of rat.

Upon arriving home, we discovered the hummingbird moths were in full-force, sucking nectar from the four o'clocks.  I was glad to see they had survived last year's repeated attacks by Rusty, the Mighty Hunter.  We also discovered the crafty squirrels had been in the bird seed can.  Ah, the fun they had!

And today, one of my daughters noticed something moving around in the back yard.  She investigated and found an Eastern Box Turtle.  He did not shyly pull into his shell as you can see.  
Visit this website below to learn more about Eastern Box Turtles.
http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/midorcas/research/Contribute/box%20turtle/boxinfo.htm