Spinning Pins

One task is spotting tomato worms. Unlike sweeping, this job looks like inactivity. You stand or squat near the plants and wait for your brain to register the thumb-sized worms among the stems and leaves.

The problem is that their camouflage is flawless. They are the exact shade of green and their diagonal stripes mimic perfectly the veins on a curled leaf’s underside. It’s impossible to digitally reproduce the sensation of a worm emerging motionlessly into your vision—your comprehension, actually.

The act of pulling them off the stem and crushing them (a dark, wet compost of green tomato-plant pulp squirts out) is a more recognizable task, maintenance or cleansing, but it cannot be performed until this little shape-meditation is complete. After all, the worm is a predator. Sometimes its false eye-spots, pretending to gaze back, are what give it away.