This photo was taken a few days ago; what you see are at least 20 kinds of flowers and veggies. It would be hard for you to imagine that we gardeners have less attractive and glamorous jobs to do.
Our fellow gardener in Pittsburgh area usually starts his day in the garden before the dawn. That is the only way he can be a step ahead of the worms as once the dawn breaks the worms will be heading underground to their safe heaven (who said ‘heaven’ has to be up in the air?)
He is literally an early bird gets the worms!
Katy and I are night owls, but we make up the lost morning hours by pursuing them in the pitch blackness in the deep of the night. Katy would pick up the slugs while I hold the flashlight.
We are not the only gardeners killing the worms; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow did it, too. He rented the house at Cambridge, MA (now known as Longfellow-Craigie House overlooking the Charles River) from Mrs. Craigie shortly after his first wife died. He killed the cankerworms and other pests that afflicted her elms and roses to save the garden. Mrs. Craigie protested, “Why, Sir, [worms] have as good a right to live as we; they are our fellow worms.”
Longfellow was an avid gardener; his gardens full of “old-fashioned pinks, heliotropes, Solomon’s seal, spiderwort, bachelor’s buttons, and dicentra.” It was said that lilacs and lilies were his great joy; zinnias are mine. He even kept a conservatory, like Emily Dickinson did, to sustain him when winter came.
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