I suppose it was inevitable.

After a couple years of relatively pest-free gardening, it appears that all the creatures great and small have found my little piece of paradise and invited their friends, family, and coworkers for an extended stay. Some of them, of course, are not pests.

I’ve been enjoying watching these guys, hard at work:

I’m no pro photographer, but I had fun trying to capture the bees with my camera! They were not very compliant in sitting still!

Today I could see that their hard work is paying off! Hello, raspberries! I can hardly wait for these to ripen. My goal is to see if I can get any back to the kitchen before my son picks off and eats them all. Wish me luck.

Last week, I noticed some other visitors had found their way to my garden. My first thought was to shriek and douse them all with water.

But then I began to think, “hey, spiders eat other bugs. Bugs that are eating my garden.” And then I began to think of Charlotte’s Web and how all her children were born and floating away and how cute they were. I decided to befriend these little guys. Sure enough, the next day (and now, a week later), I have found their webs all over my garden… including on the cages surrounding my container tomatoes!

We’ve also spotted some pretty butterflies in the garden as of late. My daughter particularly enjoys spotting one, but I’ve recently learned they enjoy a nibble on brassicas (read: KALE!). I wonder if that explains some new holes in my kale leaves. Hum…. I didn’t photograph the butterflies, but a quick Google search and I’m pretty sure what I have is cabbageworm. I am thinking of not disclosing to my daughter that her beautiful butterflies are wreaking havoc in my garden.

I do have a few happier developments to share.

Healthy pea plants! Nothing seems to be hurting these this year (knock on wood, right?)

And the first tomatoes! I’m trying a chocolate cherry variety in containers on my deck, and they seem to be doing pretty well there.

Swiss Chard is also happy looking.

And lots of healthy greens. Some of these are starting to bolt, so I’ll need to eat/use them up quickly. I have another planting that will be ready soon, too.

So there’s one more garden pest I’ve not shared with you. I debated mentioning it at all, but hey. I don’t want people to read my gardening posts and thing everything’s rosy and coming up flowers over here. Because quite frankly, it’s not.

Two nights ago my husband tells me he thinks he hears someone walking in the garden. (We have rocks out there, so it’s an unmistakable sound.) He goes out and checks, and no one’s there. I don’t think anything of it until the next morning when I do my daily garden check and watering. And that’s when I notice – hey! One of my cucumber plants is missing! I could tell the ground had been dug through a bit, so I go over to inspect further. Now this is a garden container that I’ve allowed my kids to dig through PART OF, but they know better than to dig up plants. Still, I was very much thinking my little girl had something to do with this. I grab a trowel and start moving the dirt around a bit, to find my missing plant. And instead I find…. a gift, er, of sorts…. freshly left by a cat. Unmistakable.

Fabulous! I can imagine this cat thinking it’s stumbled upon the mother of all kitty litter boxes.

Later that day, I was telling my son about it and he immediately had a solution.

“Get a shovel,” he said.

I was appalled! My son knows better than to suggest violence against animals! But then he went onto explain that we could use the shovel to simply scoop up the cat and remove it from the garden.

Sigh. If only garden pest control were so easy.

I suppose it could always be worse. For instance, I could have a Bengal Tiger problem.

Got any arugula I could nibble?

(image credit)

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