Volunteer tomatoes were doing great there in the ersatz mulch pile...till I found a suicide caterpiller munching away. So I pulled it off (no easy feat-they're tenacious) and put it under the bird feeder, thinking that was that.

Well, that was a few days ago. Today I was admiring my (ahem) handiwork and there were not one, but SIX caterpillars on my now leafless tomatoes. Since I had not invested a lot either monetarily nor emotionally on these catepillar targets, I pulled them up and put plants and all under the bird feeder (Fresh Meat!).

Wood was there as I was pulling and placing the target tomatoes, and as I was gazing in dismay at the now very murky green pond, he asked me,

"Do you think Oppenheimer was a gardener?"

"The Father of the Bomb?" I asked, thinking Wood might be more confused than I.

"Yeah," he said, " 'I am become Death, destroyer of worlds' and all that".

"Shut. Up."