Some of the comments on my blog entry from yesterday about the White House garden got me thinking about how much children can learn doing home gardening. And it reminded me of a story I heard my youngest brother telling someone recently, about a lesson our dad taught him in the garden when we were growing up.
Apparently, my dad would pay my brother a fee for tomato worms that he collected off the plants in our backyard. One day, my brother was all proud of himself, because he had found a HUGE tomato worm. That would surely be worth more than the small change he'd been getting for the microscopic baby worms, he thought!
Not so fast, young grasshopper.
Dad actually said he would pay less for the big tomato worms, because in the time it had taken them to grow big, they had succeeded in doing more damage to the tomato plants. My brother learned the value of putting more effort into searching for the harder-to-find little worms, instead of letting them grow until they were easier to see.
... is this a clever metaphorical device to describe the 'too big to fail' paradigm?
".... describe the 'too big to fail' paradigm?"
I got the words, but the message escapes me??????
...well, it was a stretch, for sure, but it does takes a lot of eating to get to be a 6" tomato worm, lot's of secret eating,...the birds couldn't even find 'em...but where's the bailout?...I say, feed 'em to the chickens!
I have four eighty pound tomato worms; two lab retrievers and two flat coat retrievers who love tomatoes. I had to put the plants in bondage to keep the dogs away. The little rottens like jack pot tomatoes the best. What can I expect though when our most manly male dog (a burgulers nightmare) saw his first chicken he picked it up and put it in his pile of stuffed animal toys by his bed. Yep great hunters they are damn vegetarian dogs!!
I thought that in this area of pioneer backyard agrarians there would be more blogger response since 3.24. And what about that Cerberus who stores chickens in his toy box. Are they alive? I gave up growing tomatoes because of those green things that look like something coming from another planet. And they come out of nowhere. And one can hear them chomp down on the plant . It's creepy. Actually I am longing for a tomato that smells and tastes like one, not just looks like one. I wonder if those creepy green things have taste buds? Joking aside...how do they control them in commercial patches? Picking them off by hand does not sound very labor or cost effective.
For ever a confirmed greengrocery patron