Here’s my solution for tonight: a bouquet of carnivorous plant pitchers from the backyard bog garden. Shown here are two Sarrecenia leucophyllas, S. alata, and the hybrid S. Judith Hindle.

It was either those or a bloom of the stinking corpse flower, which unfortunately is between flowers. Besides, it’s probably better etiquette, even on Halloween, to show up with a bouquet of pretty but slightly creepy pitchers than a mammoth blossom that smells like carrion…

Growing up, Halloween was always my favorite of the holidays. These were the years before everyone cloistered their children into parties surrounded by armed guards, and after the years when the celibrants really meant “trick or treat” when they said it–as in “give me some candy, otherwise I’ll throw eggs on your cars.” Ah. Kindler, gentler times…

I have three little selections to share with you today, ranked from mildy scary to dizzyingly horrifying.

Number one: Scary.

(The image to the left from the Orchids in Our Tropics web store [ source ])

In my orchid-growing days I was fascinated by plants in the Pleurothallis alliance of neotropics orchids, although I was never brave enough to try growing any of them. Of the thirty or so genera in the alliance, one genus had a spectacular name so appropriate for today: Dracula!

And if that’s not wild enough, Carl Luer in 1978 described what is perhaps the most outlandish of the species in the genus. And what do you suppose this mad scientist picked for the species name? Vampira! (A mad scientist with a sense of humor–I like that!) Besides having a terrific name, Dracula vampira is one awesome plant, something this photo attests to. Most of the pleurothallids are small little wonders, but the flowers on this one are eight inches top to bottom.

Scary, but intriguingly beautiful at the same time.

Number two: Scarier.
I know that I’ve shared this one bit of scariness with you before, but it continues to scare me every time I see it.

Ugly house

Every neighborhood probably has one of these, a house with a yard that looks like it’s auditioning for a part in a post-holocaust movie. Like, did the radiation from the bomb blast take out all the plants? To their credit, the homeowners do get points for creating a yard that takes no water whatsoever–a bonus in our current drought. But there are so many better ways to save water and enhance the world you live in. Greg suggested that someone seedbomb this house in a bit of guerrilla gardening, but how do you seedbomb concrete?

I’m not a big fan of the new generation of fake turf that’s going around these days. Although it’s light years beyond Astroturf, it still looks like plastic from less than fifteen feet away, and it does nothing to battle the urban heating phenomenon. At least it would begin to dress up this yard. And currently the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is offering rebates of thirty cents per square foot of lawn that you replace with the plastic stuff. (At a cost of $12 a square foot for the fake turf, the rebate doesn’t go terribly far…)

The water agencies are also offering rebates on water-efficient sprinkler heads, starting at $4.00 per head, which would pay for most of the unit, as well as rebates on weather-based sprinkler timers. Check out the information on the rebate programs. One grouse I have with them is that there’s nothing that would give you a credit for replacing lawn with low-water-use plants that would also help keep the city cool by reducing the amount of reflected solar energy that is converted to urban overheating.

Number three: Scariest.

I was in the back yard looking for the cat the other evening, rounding her up for the evening indoors. She was being extra-coy that night, and I had to go for the flashlight. Returning to the garden, the flashlight beam highlighted this atrocity less than two feet from my face: the dreaded tomato tobacco hornworm! (Edit: Thanks to Jenny for correcting my identification of this little terror.)

Tomato Hornworm

Eek! I felt like Janet Leigh in the shower scene from Psycho, only I was better dressed at the moment.

This is a horror than any gardener can empathize with, I’m sure, particularly when the tomato tobacco hornworm is chomping on the last precious tomato plant of the season. As much as I try to be kind to nature, I marched inside to get the Felco shears and did battle with the beast.

(This photo is actually of another worm I discovered the next day. All summer long there were no hornworms. And then suddenly, bam!, there were several, chomping away on what may be the last tomato in the neighborhood.)

So…you decide. Was the tomato tobacco hornworm the scariest thing? Or was it the vile, murderous gardener who would commit unspeakable acts with a pair of shears?