Fifteen hours ago, I spent an hour looking at and touching every leaf on every plant in my little garden. It was a bug-check. After having found four Hornworms over the last two days, I decided to get even more thorough, so I seriously looked at ever leaf on every plant looking for worms, aphids, and eggs of any sort. I found nothing at all, and my eyesight at close range is impeccable. There were no evil Hornworms anywhere in the vicinity of my garden, and there were certainly Hornworms on any of my plants.

All the same, I went to bed last night with the lingering fear that something was going to eat my entire garden over night. I even had dreams about it. One of those worms can eat its way through a small plant overnight.

I just crawled out of bed, threw on some clothes, and went to inspect my garden.

One of my jalapeño pepper plants has been decimated! Decimated! Destroyed to the point where I might as well just pull it out of its pot and throw it away. Where there had been no Hornworm before, there was now one the size of my index finger! So I inspected all the plants again, and there was another smaller one on Mr Stripy and two more of his branches have been stripped of leaves!

WTF?! Really? Where the hell are they coming from?! I’ve been completely anal about checking for the damn things more than once a day since I found the first one, so how the hell did I miss two of them. I can’t be out there 24/7 inspecting plants!

I am considering chemical alternatives. I’m sure the urge to go non-organic will pass, but if the bastards can go from non-existent to decimating an entire plant under the cover of darkness, what the hell am I supposed to do?

Color me entirely upset, disappointed, and grumpy this morning.