Nasty Little critters

I was so excited to see tomatoes on my little tomato vine forming about a month ago. It was an "Aunt Ginny's German Green" an hierloom seed I planted in a small pot last year . It somehow overwintered and I noticed it had survived but since I had never done anything other than notice that the seed had germinated and leave it alone to fend for itself, it barely did anything but look chlorotic last year. We moved to a new house over the winter and I put the pot with my other potted plants in the herb garden area and thought I would replant it with something new this year. Of course with my ADD gardening skills I did nothing but leave it sitting there. About a month ago I noticed it had begun to grow nicely all on its own ( probably rooted into the ground through the drainage hole to be honest) so I left it alone again seeing that it seemed to be ok with that arrangement. It had even formed 8 or 10 nice looking tomatoes that I was looking forward to tasting. I am always a sucker for hierloom tomatoes. They are all so different, they have a unique flavor and unique looking tomatoes. Just a world of different from what you get at the grocery store. Anyway...The drought finally broke here and we have gotten rain several times. I noticed that a few of the tomatoes looked ready to pick so I went to get them, but it was raining again. A few days latefr my mother in law was visiting and she was looking at my new garden inthe back yard to see what I had done with the new house. She happens to love eating ripe raw tomatoes as much as I did so I told her about ny little tomatoe that didnt die and took her to see it remembering it had tomatoes ripe for the taking a few days earlier. And I'm afraid that some nasty little slugs had decided that the tomatoes looked too good to resist as well! The rain had coused the tomatoes to swell and crack at the tops and there was a nasty slimy little slug on every good tomato nestled happily in the cracks! That was it, the deal was off, no more leaving the tomatoe plant to itself! From now on it was tomatoes as usual, constantly checking leaves and checking for little hornworms or anything else that likes to rob me of my tomatoes. Some people consider it "loving" and diligently "caring" for their tomatoes, I have even heard one author that thinks he has cofee with his tomatoe plants every morning for a checkup or just to chat with it, lant srespond well to affection you know. But my tomatoe relationship has never been quite so freindly, I am more like the tomatoe gaurd dog, a Rottwieler chained to the stake with a sign on the fence that sais I can get to the tomatoes in 6 seconds can you? Anyways at that point there was only one thing left to do...get rid of the tomatoes... oh I picked them alright and put them right into the rabbits cage! I dont even know if rabbits like tomateos and I really didnt care! I am not so good with slimy bugs, any bugs really, I quite hate them unless I happen to know they are good for your plants like worms or lady bugs or mantids or dragonflies, or if they don't really bother plants like milkweed bugs or raintree beetles, I don't even mind caterpillars as long as they turn into a butterfly not an ugly little moth. I have 4 children and my youngest is 3 so I don't use chemical insecticides. I manage to share my parsley with the butterflies and I even grow collard greens and cabbages for my rabbit. And so I loose a few leaves of my chard to some chewing little worm, I am not going to eat that stuff anyway I just think its pretty. And I admit I've never grown a stalk of corn that didn't have one of those stupid bugs in it at the top. I have only grown corn once just to see what it was like and I only did a few ears, no major loss. And most of my little baby blueberries go to the birds. I have never harvested the grapes on my vine. Mostly because its not really a grape I like so much, its one I had left over at the nursery one year and planted."Blanc du Boise" or being translated..."White grape of the woods" (its French thank you) Every year they ripen and the birds eat every last one of them. Well if I happen to notice they are ripe the kids eat a few. I grow dill every year and have never used it I don't even like it I just grow it because the butterflies do happen to like it, well they are supposed to but I must say I don't think I have ever noticed the dill being eaten by anything. I don't even like to trim it because I thingk its rather stinky putrid smelling. Some things I even grow specifically for things to eat, like sunflowers for the birds and catnip for the occaisonal stray, I don't have a cat anymore but I see them in my garden every now and again, I like them they kill rats and moles. Like most gardeners I consider my gardening self peaceful and in tune with nature, an honest love of the outdoors and th little critters that live there. (mostly a fairy tale we all have in our heads) Its all rathe rho hum really, whatever will be will be, untill it comes to my tomatoes... my tomatoes I DO NOT SHARE WITH WILDLIFE! Never have, and certainly never intended to. That is the last time I leave a tomato alone because I think it seems to "like that arrangement"! What was I thinking? Tomatoes need me to constantly fiddle with them, to obsessively check on them, they love me! I am their biggest fan, their loyal servant, their first line of defence againr the invading armies! I have NEVER had slugs all over my tomatoes! GROSS! In fact I have never had slugs on anything but my hostas. Maybe thats it, I have no hostas in this garden, I have always had easier targets for the slugs! Hmm maybe its the marigolds I always plant around my tomatoes. Probably not, just a thought. Maybe the people who lived here before had a slug farm. Maybe its because I thought the story in the last isssue of "Green Prints" (my favorite garden magazine) about the lady who went outside at night with a flashlight to pick and drown slugs in salty water was so funny till it got to the end and she had counted some ungodly number like 12000 slugs! It was mortifying! I thought it was crazy, how could there possibly be that mant slugs in one garden? Had to be fiction right? maybe a joke? Now I am terrified at knowing because I have never seen but 2 or three slugs tops even on my hostas, 10 or 20 in a beer trap. But 12000 uhhh, the thought of it is keeping me up at night!