this week we finally got some of our tomato plants out in the garden. they've been inside our house for months now — doing their thing, growing under the indoor-lights, from seed to plant, getting tall and dreaming of soil and the summer sun. basic tomato stuff. finally it was warm enough for chuck to prepare the garden bed and plant the strongest and happiest looking ones. they were not outside for long before we noticed the arrival of tiny green aphids. seriously? it is so early in the season and already we've witnessed such garden hurdles such as slugs (our poor strawberries), birds (our poor sunflower seeds) and who knows what else (our poor savoy cabbage leaves)... so when the tiny tomato leaf invaders showed up, we speedily turned to some basic garden pest control... ladybugs!! our plan is to release a bunch each night this week and see if they help protect our small plants. these photos are from sunday night's efforts. did you know that ladybugs are not fully obedient pets? apparently they do not understand simple commands like, "stay!", "sit!" and "wait! stop! comeback! don't fly away yet!!!". so we'll see how it goes... we'll be watching these red winged creatures and hope enough of them decide to stick around our tomato patch. they are fun to see in such large numbers, great for photographing and we hope they get those aphids fast.