In March I was in Arizona for the birth of granddaughter Addy’s little brother, Alex. Whenever I visit, her father, Christian, and I often create a new landscaping project. That time we removed some agaves along the side of their house and put in a garden. Christian had a truck full of garden soil delivered and the garden was raised about six inches. He and Addy went to buy plants while I stayed with the new guy and his mom, Nichole. They returned with tomatoes, peppers, melons—watermelon and cantaloupe—cucumbers, strawberries and even a pot of sprouted carrot seeds.
In June we (Kent, Matt, Matt’s girlfriend, Amy, and I) went to Arizona for Alex’s christening. The garden was flourishing and the first cantaloupe was delicious. But something was eating the tomatoes! We kept looking for the culprit, to no avail.
Alex had a beautiful baptism; I pruned the roses and came home.
A few days later, Christian and Addy, now 2 ½, were checking out the garden and saw a huge caterpillar. We learned that it was a tomato hornworm-four inches long with a scary looking horn on one end.
After feeding on tomatoes, hornworms become large moths that pollinate night bloomers. They are beneficial (once you get over the shock of how big and scary they look and don’t mind sacrificing some tomatoes) also as a host to parasitic wasps. Tiny parasitic wasps lay their eggs on the hornworms and after the eggs hatch, the larvae slowly eat their host as they 
become adult wasps. The wasps are native almost everywhere, as are the hornworms. I asked our editor, Stephanie Penick, if she had ever seen such a big caterpillar, and she remembered them while growing up in Indiana. The wasps are some of the good guys and can be purchased by suppliers of beneficial insects.
Addy loves going out every day to look for more tomato hornworms. Not afraid at all to pick up and hold them, I can only marvel at the curiosity and bravery of a young child as she learns about her world.
