Cyril called for Backup

You may remember Cyril the garden gnome. I had an entire post about him with links to all sorts of Gnome Liberation groups and a week after I posted it, it disappeared from this blog altogether. I wonder if the evil Gnome Liberators infiltrated Blogger and deleted it. Regardless, our lucky garden gnome, Cyril, has obviously found himself in over his head with our failing garden. Apparently he called for backup.

My friend Dianne, who lives in Key West and operates a Pub Crawl business with her husband, came up here to visit recently. Thanks to Tropical Storm Fay, we didn't get to actually see each other, but she was kind enough to leave a bag full of presents for us, the kids and the pets. She's good like that. Dianne is full of interesting tidbits and recently told me something I found fascinating. She told me that in Key West mosquito control trucks are currently blasting out dragonfly larvae to help control mosquitoes. The dragonfly larvae eat mosquito larvae and then grow into adult dragonflies. And as we all learned recently, adult dragonflies eat adult mosquitos. Isn't that an eco-friendly way of getting rid of mosquitos? Much better than filling the air with pesticides.

Back to the bag of gifts...When I opened up the bag this happy little garden gnome was peaking up at me. He's a fancier gnome than poor old Cyril and he comes complete with a dangling birdhouse and a red bird. He must mean business because he has gardening tools in his pocket.

I waited a week or so before the garden dried out enough to introduce our new gnome to the garden. I put him next to the row of pumpkins since I feel like those need the most luck at this point. He's firmly planted in his new home, so we'll see if this gnome brings us more luck. He still needs a name though...