Sunday Rain Monster Blogging

Our monster monsoon rains have created a myriad of monsters in New Mexico this summer -- monster floods, puddles, weeds, double rainbows, overflowing arroyos and lightning storms. They've also created a couple of monsters in our backyard. The huge morning glory plant above came from seed and grew at a slow pace throughout our bone dry Spring and early Summer, never producing any flowers. But when the daily heavy rains came, it exploded with new growth, completely enveloping a tallish tree stump it was leaning against and reaching out for more. It's now putting out dozens of new blooms each morning. A lollapalooza of a morning glory plant.

Same thing with these big fat tomato hornworms, which are the caterpillar stage of the tobacco sphinx moth. We've grown tomatoes in the same backyard patch for many summers but never encountered any of these prodigious plant munchers. The extreme wetness this year is evidently the reason for the two specimens shown above that we plucked off our plants this morning. Despite their being very hard to see, we've found several others recently and all have met the same fate. We put them out near the wild bird feeders and they become luscious, juicy avian treats. One creature's ceiling is another one's floor. Or something like that.  Slurp! (Click on images for larger versions.)

PS: Duke City Fix has plucked some terrific monsoon shots from the Albuquerque Flickr collection. Go see.