Well I got crummy news. After coughing and laying around for the past week, I accompanied DH to his doctor appointment yesterday. After he finished with him he told me to hop up on the table- I'd been coughing as usual. After checking my lungs, he said he heard rattling and said I had walking pneumonia. I had to do a breathing treatment then and there and picked up four prescriptions. All I've felt like doing is going out to pick blackberries and put water in the creek. The crabgrass is going to take over before I'm back out there☹️

I'm SO far behind--2 days worth. I read the 2 posts above me. Will catch up tomorrow night.

Patti, I'm so sorry you're sick. Hope you feel better soon.

So, Rebecca, is your strawberry lemonade from Sonic? And then you spiked it? I"ve so considered doing that.

While the boys were changing the starter on Ethan's car, I messed around in the garden--watering and weeding. Stuff like that. I've decided where I have most of the tomatoes (they are at ground level), I"m not going to build raised beds there. I'm going to put a frame around it and just leave it. The soil is so nice there. Two and a half years ago we tilled this garden spot and then a hill of compost sat on this specific spot in the garden. And then cottonseed hull mulched the plants there last year, and then autumn leaves. I"m just going to dump my compost pile there in the fall (when the tomatoes finish up) and top it off with leaves.

Also, I'm considering taking a break from any squash plants next year. The stupid SVB are actually getting into the volunteer Seminole pumpkins. Seriously. What in the world? Maybe these plants are a cross between the Halloween pumpkins from last year and the Seminole. I am going to plant a few Seminole seeds. I just haven't had time to do that since I pulled the last of the onions on Monday. I'll see how they do. So far the SVB haven't gotten into the Korean squash, as they should not. My sweet little volunteer Halloween pumpkin plant is a goner. SVB. It actually had a little pumpkin on it and I put sevins around it. On a happy note. I haven't seen squash bugs or SVB in the back garden where the zucchini and yellow summer squash are growing. Does that seem backwards? It does. Other than, I didn't grow squash products back there at all last year.

Anyway, being out in the garden, un-rushed, helped me get a plan together for my garden. It's still a work in progress. I enjoyed my time out there. It was nice to not have to hurry. I could just be.

I had a weird, crazy thought about selling our house and moving into a little house in Norman that sits on 2 lots--big enough for chickens and a decent garden. It even has a coop on it. Norman allows chickens. It would be so much more manageable..and we could actually make money on this property..with all the work we've done to it. And this "2 lot" house is near the downtown area which I LOVE. The shops, the art gallery, my pilates studio, Earth cafe, BUT, I would not really do that. I love living here. It's just overwhelming at times. So many projects as it was really a blank slate when we moved here 3 years ago. Not even a flower bed or anything when we moved in. But, when we sit outside and can hear the coyotes and peacefulness of it all. I can't trade that for a cute, less overwhelming house in town. Then there's my 2 year old asparagus! AND that is a consideration! lol

HazelJen, nope, I made this one. Vitamin Water Zero lemonade, frozen strawberries, pinch of sugar, shot of vodka, and a couple ice cubes in the Ninja blender. You can sub in any berry or alcohol, or go booze-free, and any kind of lemonade.

My goodness, you (we) are a talkative bunch! LOL . Just got caught up reading today's posts. We were out fishing from 8 to 4. That kinda shoots a day, as we're always tired when we get home, How can we be tired from sitting in a boat all day. And it wasn't like I was jumping up battling 20 lb fish. I caught 3 small-average Mississippi cats. Garry whomped me with 7. And this time I remembered to put lots of sunscreen on as I got a good enough burn to hurt last week. Why, it's like magic.

Okay Dawn. Too much nitrogen? I cannot believe that's an issue here. . . and haven't seen signs of that with anything else. Too few predators, that's probably a fact. Nonetheless, the aphids have been lively and hungry for 3 years running. I can't have a sweet potato vine or morning glory that's whole. The past two years, however, the aphids didn't hit until August. This year they've been with us from the beginning. Having said all that, if that's the worst thing we see, I'm happy. I'm not even going to breathe out loud the nasty ones we haven't seen. . . . I'll just leave it at that, and now that I know when the cabbage caterpillars showed up, have first of May or so circled for me to put netting over those next year. I massacred a bunch of Japanese beetles for 3 days running, and haven't seen any lately, but am always on the lookout. Didn't grow squash this year because I got the SVB on my zuccchini last year (we did get several butternuts, though). I'm looking forward to the Korean squash next year. Lots more tomatoes today, 20 to be precise. . . I am excited to get some of them put up on Monday! Big fun canning day.

I took tomato cuttings, hope it isn't too late (?)--Nah, they're gonna root really fast and I can slam them in. There's one really nice one (gotta be Illini) in a less-than-perfect-sun flower bed--not optimal, but it has some good ones on it. Heck--it might not even die back this summer. It's really just getting going. The beat-up ones in the raised beds aren't getting worse. . . they're really doing just fine, though aren't beautiful and perfect. We still have two potato hold-outs that are just as green as green can be. One is the one that sprouted up in the finished compost section of the compost. I accidentally unearthed two medium-to-large red potatoes there last week when I was getting some compost out. Maybe both of those two healthy plants will give me another 4 lbs of potatoes. Every little bit helps.

I was amazed to see more sweet potato "plants" that sprang up next to the sweet potatoes I'd planted--like the fig tree incident. Since I've never grown them before, I had no idea they did that. How cool! And they were unblemished by aphids. . . haha that's not gonna last long.

Chiggers--no big deal. They really only bother me every evening. So I jump into the bath, scrub the heck out of em, jump out and scrub them with alcohol and then I'm good til the next evening.

Rebecca, I went into Walmart to try and get 1x1" stakes. . . (the bamboo ones weren't sturdy enough, I decided.) GDW said since the storm had just been through, they probably were out. They were. So I go more bamboo ones. Agggh. BUT I got them all in and zip-tied everything and so it helps, at least.

Mil, I'm probably shortly behind you with the mobility. I know whenever we experience disabilities, whether born to them or acquired,, we find other ways around them, as you have, apparently in a remarkably effective way. I hope I have the heart to deal with them, too. I have a gimpy right hand because of two breaks in the wrist followed by a really important tendon rupture (thumb to wrist, extensor pollicis longus), and now the two amputated fingertips. It's the tendon deal that causes the problems, really. The numb fingertips are just an annoyance, mostly, but do add to the general gimpiness (especially with fine motor skills, among which are typing. LOL) But God BLESS you with it not stopping you. I hope I can be like you.

Dawn, you almost made me start crying just picturing you chopping up all those onions. I love onions in our daily menu and I HATE cutting them up daily. But I do. BUT............ that's gotta be about as bad as the horseradish harvest! I'm alMOST glad we didn't grow 200 of them.

HJ, love that you checked in. You always fill my heart with laughter and joy. And you know that.

Our 13-yr-old great-granddaughter (it's complicated) that has invited herself down since I first got here on February 14, 2015, at least twice a year for a week, sometimes three times (looks like it could be 3 or 4 times this year) called and wanted to come spend a week this weekend. Of course she can. I feel so honored that she wants to come. We're not great hosts or entertainers, But truly, I think that's what she likes. She can relax, veg out, sleep til she gets up. Have as much alone time as she wants. But then we can go fishing, which she loves, and she can helps me plant flowers or she can paint, or like next week, she will help me can tomatoes. Her away times here are gifts for her, but they are BIG gifts to me. And to GDW. I just am so thankful that she keeps wanting to come down.

Yesterday was spent observing others working. My favorite sport. ;-) Raymond's friend Jim, who has helped him with all of the remodeling on this 67 year old house/ place, decided he would rather spend at least part of the day working indoors, so they built a cabinet around the whole house water filtration system they put in over a month ago. (By the way, it's so nice to have "well water" again. Duncan water was so bad we would no longer drink it or use for cooking.) There was room to extend the width of the cabinet to include some shelves for storing small kitchen appliances. We may or may not get doors right away. Jim just shows up when he is in between bigger jobs, but no one here is complaining. The whole project was started 6 years ago. We are talking a lot of work indoors and out. Raymond wanted a small shop, which they built, but Jim insisted it needed to be a combination shop and "man cave". LOL So, now it is fully finished with A/C and a hot oil heater for winter. (Works out well for curing sweet potatoes, too.) Then, of course, you have to have a garden shed for mowers, weed eaters, tillers, and hand tools... especially if your shop turned into a man cave. With Jim, the fix is in if I make him a pie or goodies of some sort every so often... hey, I even get called "mom". LOL

Chiggers; not sure it really worked, but I believed it did... I would saturate a wash cloth with rubbing alcohol when I came in from walking about in grass or working in the garden, and rub my legs and arms down with that. Don't know if I just wiped them off or the alcohol did the trick. Don't think anything short of a good scrub down bath would help if wearing full length jeans, though. I used to dab some stick deodorant on the bites to stop itching, but I suspect Anbesol would work better since it is a analgesic. If I get a burn in the kitchen I run for that right after holding it under cold water or applying some ice.. stops the pain right away for me.

I started some tomato cuttings in early June, just because the early ones were struggling with the herbicide thing. (The suckers near the top looked pretty good) Had the bright idea they might be happier with some air around the developing roots, so filled a jar with perlite and water to stick them in. Yep, they were very happy to root in that... the trick was getting them out without destroying the roots. I finally had to submerge them in a rain barrel and "float" them out. Grimace!! Nice big root systems and ready to start blooming in short order.

As for "heart", I suspect it is more of a case of pure old stubbornness. I think we all just make the best of a situation, if possible. Waste of time to fight it.

DH grilled the Korean squash last night. OMG it was good! I thought it might have been too big, starting to show a few seeds, but the taste was excellent. He grilled salmon and made jasmine rice with coconut milk. All good!

I've been tying up tomato plants that are trying to escape their cages. I don't want branches waving in the wind too much if it storms. I literally threw some flower seeds in empty spaces in beds, and the flower beds.

Millie, I understand. I have 2 artificial hips and an artificial knee. I can't get up if I fall either, and I do fall. Broke my wrist right before Christmas. I have a 5 gallon bucket with a spin seat I sit on in the garden. I think it was Larry who had a built in hand rail in his garden. That is on my list of improvements.

LOL, Rebecca, I got out of Lowes for even less, something like 8 for my pump up spray bottle. But they didn't have sulfur.

Patti, pneumonia is awful, it sucks up all your strength. So rest and get well. I found it took a while before I got my strength back.

H/J, sounds like you had a nice time in your garden! I think volunteer pumpkins are especially attractive to SVB. I didn't grow squash for a year, then I grew it under tulle. I grew a Seminole pumpkin last year, very late and it didn't have time to fruit. ::whispering:: I haven't seen an SVB since the bad year. As Dawn says, sometimes you wouldn't anyway. But sometimes the gardener needs a break.

I researched chiggers a couple of years ago. Just rubbing your legs after being out can be enough to kill them. I'm sure the alcohol is added killing power.

NANCY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Amy, Sometimes the battle isn't worth it, you know? I'd like to think that as we get older and gain in both hard-earned wisdom and gardening experience, we learn to pick our battles carefully---certainly more carefully than we did 35 or 25 or 15 years ago. I planted 4 times as many squash plants (laughing at myself because that probably isn't accurate, it is more like 10 times as many) as we need, figuring we'd get a ton of squash early and I wouldn't feel like I have to battle squash bugs and SVBs all summer long. It is sort of the same philosophy that has me canning tomatoes like crazy in June and early July so I can yank out 90% of the tomato plants when I'm done canning and only have to deal with a handful of tomato plants for the rest of the summer.

I was looking at the squash plants this morning sort of in horrified fascination while harvesting peppers. All those squash plants planted early have been very productive---I think everyone in the family but me already has seen all the squash they want to see, or eat, this summer. Now the succession plants are in full production, covered in flowers and fruit, and needing to be harvested tomorrow. I expected by now the SVBs already would have killed the original squash plants transplanted into the ground in mid-March and would be working on killing the succession plants planted in May. Nope. All alive and all producing. Many thoughts ran through my mind this morning (addressed to the squash plants): Why are you still alive? Why haven't some of you died? Where are all the squash bugs? Where's the diseases? Why haven't SVBs started killing you yet? Why are you Korean summer squash plants trying to grow south (towards the nearest tomato bed) instead of north (towards the asparagus bed, which is where they normally go)? What in the world do y'all think I am going to do with all this squash? Why are you sweet potatoes climbing the trellis with the Korean summer squash plants when you're supposed to be growing on the ground at their feet? Whose fault is all this? Ooops, I know it is mine. I take responsibility for it.

So, this could be my worst nightmare---a ton of squash plants planted in the expectation that they'd die in rapid succession once the SVBs arrived, and no SVBs yet so also no dying or dead plants yet. If I'd known the SVBs would be so tardy this year, then I wouldn't have put so many squash plants in the ground at one time.

Even the tomato plants, with various ones plagued by septoria leaf spot, early blight or gray mold (and with some having both SLS and EB) refuse to die, continuing to put out new growth as soon as I strip off old diseased growth. I know I am not supposed to hope for plants to die, but it is a food preservers's garden and I only need to preserve so much of any given thing. It is much harder for me to yank out half-healthy plants that are trying hard to overcome the illness, than half-dead plants that seem like they are on their last legs.

I harvested a laundry basket full of peppers and will spend the afternoon processing most of them after setting aside about a week's worth of peppers for fresh eating. I wanted to harvest squash too, but the heat index hit 100 and I was done. I will harvest squash tomorrow morning. I did weed the pepper bed as I worked my way through it and staked a couple of plants that were leaning sideways due to the heavy load of peppers they were carrying. I would have loved to spend the whole day out there, but I just cannot take the heat and know better than to try. Now I'm inside in the air conditioning, drinking a rapid hydration drink called Hoist, and planning how I can use some squash (harvested earlier this week), hot and sweet peppers and tomatoes in tonight's dinner menu without repeating anything we've already eaten this week.

Millie, It sounds like you and your son have a nice setup for raising your own transplants for the garden. We do too. In late winter it seems like the garden is taking over the entire spare bedroom upstairs, and then I eventually get all that out of the house. As fun as it is to raise seedlings indoors, I'm always relieved when we take down the light shelves and restore the room to functioning as a regular room again instead of as a plant room.

Rebecca, Spray bottles that suddenly stop spraying drive me crazy. It sounds like you had a really productive day.

Patti, I'm sorry you are ill and hope you heal quickly. Pneumonia is no fun.

Hazel, It is hard to catch up. Maybe y'all will get some rain and it will force you to stay indoors and then you can spend some computer time catching up on everything.

I cannot believe you have SVBs so far north and yet they haven't found our place here roughly 100-110 miles south of y'all. Since they tend to move from south to the north as the season goes on, it just seems pecuilar. It doesn't make sense. I'm not exactly complaning, but it seems odd. I expected them by now. I cannot believe they are going after your Seminole volunteers either. I do think I had one Seminole plant die once, but I don't think SVBs got it. It was doing a hot, dry summer and we were gone to fires a lot and I think it might have picked up some disease from squash bugs, but I wasn't home long enough to look at it and figure it out.

It might seem odd that you are not seeing the squash bugs ahead of the SVBs, but with all of them, it just depends on where they were last year and where they overwintered. Squash bugs were late to arrive here (yesterday I saw only my second adult one of the season, but found a bunch of eggs and newly hatched nympjs) and SVBs are even later, but we had neither one last year, as far as I know though some could have showed up after I abandoned the garden to remodel the kitchen in August). Because your part of the state has been very dry for at least the last month and rapidly is sliding into a flash drought (I expected y'all to be in Moderate Drought on yesterday's Drought Monitor, but y'all only were "Abnormally Dry"), I expect pest issues will skyrocket there in central OK. Drought and pests go together since drought stresses the plants and then pests flock to stressed plants. I expect the same will happen here. Part of our county went back from Moderate Drought to Abnormally Dry because of the 1.5" recorded at our Mesonet station, but then if we don't get more rain, we'll slip right back into Moderate Drought again. I just should stop watching the map so closely because what I see in my own garden with my own two eyes tells me all I need to know.

Sometimes the amount of upkeep needed on rural property is overwhelming. Sometimes you just have to do what you can and then let the rest go. We do not keep the 3 acres nearest the house mowed down short like we always did in our early years here. Nowadays, I am happy if we can keep the acre or 1.5 acre nearest the house mowed down short. We do what we have time to do, and let the rest go and just hope for the best. You can only do what you have time to do, and we do not want to spend every waking minute mowing, weedeating and pruning so we have found a compromise. Maybe the big pasture out back and the smaller one out front only get mowed once every 6 weeks or so instead of weekly, and that's okay. Actually it is better---more wildflowers for the wild things when we mow less often.

Nancy, That was a long day on the boat. I hope y'all had fun.

I don't have aphids on the morning glories or bindweed (I do pull the bindweed every chance I get but more sprouts quickly, almost nonstop, so we're never without it) but they do have holey leaves. I believe the culprits are those little gold tortoise beetles that feed on bindweed. Oddly, there's no holes (yet) on the moonflower vines, which are in the same family.

It is not too late for cuttings as they root quickly.

Have fun with your great-granddaughter, although there is no way on this earth that you and Garry possibly could be old enough to have a great-granddaughter.

Millie, I like watching other people work too. Especially if they are doing something I hate doing or cannot do.

Right now I am being a cat bed, with our oldest cat, Yellow Cat, snuggled up and leaning on me to sleep. He was a wild feral cat who roamed our neighborhood for at least a decade before he came to live with us around 2007 or 2008. Our friend, Fred, had been feeding him and Yellow Cat (Fred called him 'that old yeller cat" and it just stuck and became his name) had recently started roaming less and sleeping under Fred's porch. We laughed about Yellow Cat retiring from his roaming, feral lifestyle to a life of easy meals and sleeping under the porch. Then Fred took in a stray dog who only wanted to share Yellow Cat's food and also sleep under the porch, and Yellow Cat packed up his bags and moved here to live with us. He is at least 20 years old and is slowing down a lot this past year, but still loves to be petted and loves to sit beside me wherever I am. He isn't going outside much any more, which means he is smarter than me and avoids the heat better than I do. He used to be a great garden cat, but now if he comes to the garden it only is because he came outdoors with me, has had enough and wants me to come up to the house and open the door so he can come inside. This time, he was right---it was too hot, so when I let him indoors, I came inside to stay too. Tim doesn't have to worry too much about me staying out too long in the garden in the heat any more, because Yellow Cat just won't allow it. He's sort of my guardian angel cat as well as the now-retired garden cat.

Dawn

I keep forgetting to mention, but someone sent me a bunch of columbine seeds. Has to be from here or the facebook group, but I didn't recognize the name as matching someone on here. So if you were the one who sent them, thanks!

We are getting a puppy. What have I done?

Remember the Gary O'sena that wasn't? There are 2 stems coming up from that plant and one has beefsteak tomatoes! I got a twofer. I tasted a Dwarf today. It was a spitter. VERY sour. I think I have another plant, we'll see if it's any good. The tomatoes are not happy in the root pouches. Lots of BER.

It looks like it wants to rain outside, but radar doesn't show it. I'm going out to put the rain gauge up!

Dawn, I wish you'd share some of those fresh garden dinner menus and recipes. I'm not good at that, except for stir fry.

Dawn... half healthy as opposed to half dead? I'll bet you are the glass half full type, also. LOL I had to chuckle about that. I know this doesn't apply to you, but my mother used to frustrate me to death because she COULD NOT prune, or if she did the prunings would become cuttings for rooting. The first time my husband was deployed to Korea after we married I lived with her... he had some roses delivered from a local florist. They were in a bed of what I think was privet branches in the box. She took those darned things out and rooted them.

The plant light set up may be his way to keep me entertained as well as useful. He has figured out that I can grow healthier plants than he can find here and for a lot less. (To be fair, there is one decent nursery in Duncan, but they can get expensive) Now he grumbles about greenhouse plants and understands the term "root bound", etc. I once saw cauliflower plants that were so old they had little tiny (1/3 inch) heads on them, and still in a 6 pack. They were "on sale" at a builder supply... some people just should not ever handle plants.

Yellow Cat sounds like a good buddy to have. We had one like that in MO. He was left behind when some people moved away. We would catch a glimpse once in awhile... then winter set in for real and one morning I went out to walk the poodles. (Didn't dare leave them... we had Bald Eagles in winter on the lake) Poor old cat came up the driveway yowling his head off. I told my husband he had two choices.. feed him or put him out of his misery. Softy took him a bowl of dog food until we could get out and get some cat food. Later we found out he had been rescued before from a culvert, and he had been called "pip cat". He never came inside, but was always there when we went out and was more than happy to sit on a lap as long as you did not restrain him in any way. We laughed at the jealousy the dogs expressed. I have a picture of one poodle sitting on top of the cat in my husbands lap. He was never mean to the dogs, but did love to pounce out of the dark and land just in front of them... I think he liked to hear them yelp when startled. LOL I still think that animals have a sense of humor. Rescued animals have always made the best companions. Like most people I have lots of animal stories. This is the first time I am without a pet. Lost my last poodle last year. We used to keep large working dog breeds, but we had to "graduate" to little dogs after we got older and when too many people moved in near us.

Amy, that was a timely post... just as I was lamenting no longer having a companion dog. Enjoy the little rascal, and do tell us what you are getting. One of our favorite dogs was a Poodle/Blue Healer. LOL I'll let you all imagine what that looked like, unless I can get my son to show me how to post pictures. Millie

Puppy, the brown one. They've been calling her Honey. We have an old beagle mix, named Holly, Holly and Honey sounds good. Of course stop it Honey gets a little weird. I may be too old for potty training, chewing and digging. Just got the chickens penned up. Now I'll need garden fences again.

Millie, my daughter is fostering a dog. She can't keep her, she doesn't like the other dogs, but she gets along fine with people. She is part sharpei they think. But she's not bristly like they are. If you'd be interested.

Amy, Every home needs a puppy, even though they grow up and eventually become grumpy old dogs. We have four fur babies---two oldies: Jet (12 years old), Jersey (10 years old) and two youngsters: Ace (approx 3.5 years old) and Princess (approx. 3.5 years old). Each of them has added immeasureable joy to our lives, especially after they got past the tearing up/digging up/chewing up and shredding everything in sight stage. Ace and Princess showed up shortly before we lost first, Honey (brain tumor) and then Sam (heart). When the two puppies showed up, we didn't need two more dogs, but both Honey and Sam were pretty old and ill by then and we knew that their weeks were numbered, so we kept Ace and Princess, who I assumed were dumped "in the country" by whoever they lived with before use. That happens a lot out here. We could have 100 dogs if we wanted (and we don't) because animals get dumped out here all the time. I even remember thinking that God had sent Ace and Princess to us because he knew losing Sam and Honey was imminent and he thought we needed puppies to heal the hole in our hearts that losing two old dogs would cause. It worked. I also thought that having two little pups around brightened up Honey's and Sam's last few weeks as it seemed to re-invigorate them. So, see....I think you need a puppy....or 2, 3 or 4. The hardest part will be teaching a dog to coexist with chickens I imagine.

That's great that you got a twofer, and bad about the dwarf being a spitter.

We have a decent chance of rain tonight/tomorrow, but you know, it always seems to miss us when we are in drought and desperately need it, so I'm not necessarily expecting the rain to actually fall.

It got too hot here earlier, with a heat index up to 106, but the cold front (though not yet close) must be bringing us cooler air, or at least it has dropped our dewpoint 8 points in the last 4 hours or so and now our heat index is down to only 102. It isn't much improvement but we'll take it.

I think dinner tonight will be bar-b-q'd chicken, jalapeno poppers (sliced jalapenos, roasted to turn them into chipotles, stuffed with a mixture that's 50% cream cheese and 50% cheddar cheese, topped with about 1/4 slice of bacon) baked in the oven, boiled squash/onions, fresh muskmelon (one of the Dixondale ones I bought at WinCo last weekend...I've been buying them weekly while waiting for ours to mature), sliced tomatoes (always, at every meal except breakfast) and maybe some sort of potatoes. I'll try to post fresh garden recipes as I make them. I have a lot of vegetable cookbooks.

Here's a helpful fresh garden veggie tip: my husband will eat any vegetable that has had cheese, onions or bacon cooked with them in any shape, form or fashion. It doesn't matter if the veggie is baked, boiled, broiled, roasted, grilled or whatever---just add bacon, cheese or onions OR bacon, cheese and onions.

I forgot the zucchini. Well, we can grill that and have it tomorrow. I usually just drizzle it with olive oil and sprinkle herbs on top, or as a shortcut, drizzle it with Italian salad dressing and then grill it.

Mostly this afternoon I am roasting jalapenos to turn them into chipotles and then will freeze them. After that I'll chop up sweet bells for salsa and then freeze them. I already blanched squash for freezing and sliced it up. Then, if I don't run out of time before it is time to start making dinner, I have a lot of tomatoes to process. If I don't get to them today, there's always tomorrow.

Princess just had a barking fit so I ran out the front door to see what she was seeing---it was not a coyote. It was a hawk swooping down to try to get a chicken. The hawk took off as soon as I came out the front door. Princess is a good alert/alarm system. Nothing comes onto our property that she's not aware of and doing her best to make us aware of it as well.

Dawn

Awww, cutie! We have 3 dogs & 2 cats, & my husband is dropping hints for a puppy. If he were to ask right now, I'd probably agree. But we really have enough as it is.

I'm hoping the new puppy will bark to alert us. The dog that just died used to bark at people until they petted her. The beagle just rolls over and shows them her belly. I don't think she even barks at squirrels any more. Maybe a cornered bunny. We had 2 dogs, then daughter brought a dog, then son brought a dog. Son has taken his dog. Daughter's dog went to the boyfriend's when it started getting aggressive. We dog sit occasionally. I don't need 3 or 4! Been there. One dog leaves more than enough poop. Besides, supposedly you need a kennel licence for more than three dogs in Owasso. Wondering what the cat will think. Ha.

Melon. I have a taste for watermelon....

I didn't even go out in the garden after work. Exhausted, headachey, and it didn't cool off nearly as much as they thought it would. And no rain. Ordered pizza and am now waiting on my toenails to dry. Of course, now it just means I have that much more to do tomorrow, but eh, I'll get to it.

Dawn, I wish I had gotten a lot done yesterday, but really, the most stuff got done to my Ancestry.com account. For some reason I'm dealing with right elbow pain, so kind of trying to rest it, but things still await me. Tennis elbow? Is there such a thing as tomato plant elbow?

The sunflowers that were lost to squirrels are getting ready to bloom again. Just had to re-stake them upright. And get my butt out there with the new spray bottle full of pepper spray. I wonder if it was the molasses in the recipe that made the first spray bottle stop?

I didn't know that frogs can scream.

Oh dear Chickencoupe, you made me think of something that really bothered me when I was just a kid. We had a small creek just over the back yard fence, and one day I would have sworn I was hearing a baby crying. I searched and searched to find that pitiful sound. It was a poor frog being swallowed by a snake. It was too late to save him by the time I could dispatch the snake. I was a darn good shot with a rock in those days. LOL That comes from growing up in the Ozarks with lots of rocks for weapons. The entire collection of rocks that we have found here in 4 years wouldn't fill a cup measure... I would have been lost.

I hate the frog scream sound, Bon.

Dawn, my posts are so rambly, but I do have squash bugs too. As well as SVB. Except neither in the back garden where the yellow summer squash and zucchini are...which is weird.

Good job, Princess!

Cute puppy, Amy. I love dogs, but am becoming aware that I'm actually a cat person. AND that could just be that dogs require more time and training...and I lack in time. I've always wondered if I am a cat person or a dog person...because I can't imagine my life without either. Until recently. But it might be because my dogs are not easy--Kane was dumped and had severe behavior issues (not violent) and Josi, who couldn't get adopted from the dog rescue from which we got her because of her anxious behavior and incessant high pitched barking. They saw us coming. If I ever get another dog after these have passed, it will be either a young puppy that I can train. OR a small dog. One that won't kill chickens.

I'm so disappointed. It looks like we won't get rain. There are horrible cracks in our ground right now. Looking ahead, there's another chance for rain next week. I sure hope we get it. If not, it could put a damper on July 4th celebrations. Everything is dry and crispy.

I hope others are getting much needed rain.

Awww, puppies. . . . . puppies AND kittens. And thank you, Amy! :) . AND BTW, why, you're like the bionic woman! Wowser! Do all your new joints work well? I sure hope so!!

I'm sure there is a real thing called "tomato plant elbow," Rebecca. You just start using the term. I'm sold.

I love the story about Yellow Cat, Dawn. Sweet sweet cat and sweet story! And thanks for the garden veggies tip. :) . Or butter. You forgot butter. For me, especially butter and cheese and then bacon and onions as the occasion calls for them. Garry's like Tim--the occasion always calls for bacon!

No. . . . I missed the frog scream comment, but certainly had no idea either. I'm just now backtracking to see what you all talked about today. (My event today was. . . . drum roll. . . going to the Sequoyah State park and hitting golf balls on the driving range! hahahahahaha! If it hadn't been so blasted hot and humid, it would have been fun. It has been only 33 years since I OD'd on binge-playing golf for only 3 years, but I did love it. Too funny. I did so much better today than I could have dreamt. Not good, but so much better than I'd have guessed. Oh my. Why would we have done that!! It's not like there's a course nearby to go to; it's not like we could afford to do it as often as it'd take. Told GDW coming back, I'd have to rig up a miniature golf course out in the yard, and set up a putting green in the living room. What a character he is!)

I'm so sorry you got zapped by this pneumonia, Patti--so miserable, but in the summer seems unusually brutal! Is it going around down there? Hope you're up and back to normal quickly.

After "playing" for two solid days, I have so much to do tomorrow. . . laundry, mowing, freezing tomatoes, quick thinking of something for company dinner tomorrow night, quick cleaning the fridge and on and on. . . thankfully everything is pretty weed-free in the gardens at the moment (cept for the Bermuda in the far two beds. . . which is all gonna be back if I don't get out there!), Nothing big to be done in the garden that can't wait for a week except picking tomatoes and peppers. When the GGD gets here tomorrow evening, I'll have her help me can tomatoes on Monday and/or Tuesday. And of course, it looks like really decent weather next week, so I KNOW she'll be anxious to get out on the lake and fish. And also have to be thinking of Kaida's favorite foods for dinners next week.

Some plants/veggies/flowers are doing so great, others, blah. lol . Isn't that the way it always goes? Overall, things look good. There's another "street"/road that is the next street over from ours, which goes along the back of our property. We came back on it tonight just to how it all looks from that angle, and I had to laugh at all the beautiful-looking "shrubs" that showed up really well. Very funny, because a couple of the large-looking ones were two caged tomato plants out in the center bed, and the morning glory and hyacinth beans I had crawling up a 6' cage encircling one of the oaks. My beautiful tomato and MG "shrubs" looked mighty fine from the back road!

Amy, This morning, Jet showed me he still has a little 'will' left in him. He chased away a deer in the driveway near the garden. He didn't chase it far, just enough for it to jump the pasture fence and get off of Jet's property...because, you know, he is a dog and it is all about him. He was proud all day that he had defended his territory, even though he's so old and frail that he looks like a little old man running. In his youth, he would have chased that deer for a good 40 or 50 acres until he was sure it wasn't coming back. He has to pace himself more carefully now. As cute and adorable as puppies are, there's something equally endearing about an old dog turning gray and slowing down physically but still loyal and determined to protect his family and his turf. Every time I look at our old, gray-haired dogs, there's a certain degree of sadness because I know they won't be here forever.

Rebecca, I do believe there is such a thing as gardener's elbow and gardener's wrist. In the Spring when I'm out there doing tons of repetitive motion, my elbows and wrists do get sore and achey. Sometimes my shoulder does. I blame it on getting older but I do think the repetitiveness of certain garden chores also just wears away at our joints.

I might have been the molasses. You might try to clean the tip with really hot water or a toothpick or a small brush.

Bon, The tree frogs that scream and sound just like a lady screaming in the distance about drove me out of my mind our first year here. I was so sure I was hearing a woman scream and it was so disconcerting. I guess I'm used to it now, but back then, even when I was hearing it for the 400th time, it still bothered me.

Millie, Been there, done that with the poor frogs being swallowed by snakes. During the Drought of 2011, all the ponds and creeks dried up. A water moccasin moved to our lily pond just outside the back door and started devouring frogs. Because drought continued on and off in 2012, 2013 and 2014, the venomous snakes in the lily pond became a permanent issue. No matter how many we shot, more came. Of course, there were no frogs left, and I worried about the water moccasion reaching out and getting someone looking at the flowers or walking by, so eventually we took out the lily pond. I really miss it, but once the venomous snake moved into it, that was it for me. I'd love to have another lily pond some day, but it won't be near the house and it will have snake fencing.

The snakes in my garden now must be eating the frogs and toads. There don't seem to be any frogs or toads left in the front garden. I have not been seeing snakes in the back garden and still have at least one big frog back there, but I'm sure it is just a matter of time and the snakes will show up out back and the frog or frogs will be gone.

They have increased our chance of rain tonight to 80%. That sounds so good, but the NWS is wrong so often that the higher the odds they give us, the less likely we are to get rain. I'm basing this on tons of observation over the years. We need rain in the worst possible way, so probably won't get it. The Fourth of July is approaching and everyone will go nuts setting off fireworks in pastures and the firefighters will be out there running from fire to fire. If it would rain a couple of times between now and July 4th, that moisture would help a lot. June usually is one of our rainiest months, and so is May, but neither of them has been especially rainy this year.

Since it rained last week, we need to mow tomorrow, so even though we need rain, getting rain will interfere in us being able to mow. I don't know whether to wish for rain for the garden or to wish for no rain so we can mow.

The bees have not been real visible in the garden lately. Well, today they were back with a vengence all over the place, but especially visiting the catmint, sweet alyssum and verbena bonariensis. It was good to see them and I had some sort of funky big wasp that I am pretty sure is one of the really, really good guys. Oh, and a snowberry clearwing moth. They're adorable. Flies have been trying to get into the house all day and I've been killing them. I think flies coming indoors is a sign rain is coming, so maybe the flies have more faith in the forecast than I do.

Dawn

oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NANCY!

and, Rebecca, I'm doing ancestry stuff too. I did a 23 and Me ancestry thing. I haven't had time to deal with it much lately, but yesterday I had a cousin pop up, who I don't know. And it looks like she has information going back at least 6 generations, where I couldn't go past my great grandfather. (on that side anyway.) Other branches of the family can be traced to Europe, but not this one. Until now maybe. Did you do a DNA test? What is your haplogroup? that is my recent obsession. Other than gardening and chickens. :)

I updated my family on Heritage, HJ and Rebecca, about 7 years ago. Got my relatives back to the late 1600s. It was so much fun, and found other second cousins or "long-lost" cousins who'd been working on it, too. Now I just check occasionally to update it, and haven't had energy to go any further back; not sure it's possible, as I sort of dead-ended there.

And thanks much, HJ; was a delightful day.

Dawn, you mentioned installing a snake fence. I've never heard of this. Please explain.

Another day forced inside-taking pills and coughing my head off if I stay still, I don't cough as much but I know I need to get the crud out of my lungs.

Patti

Oh you know to wish for rain, Dawn--always time to mow later. I was bemoaning the same thing yesterday about ours, and knew I couldn't get to it until tomorrow. Well now we have like 10% of precipitation tonight. I really hope you get some good rain and some of the rest of you who so need it!

Millie/Dawn It was a beautiful Western Ribbon snake with an awesome reflective/neon stripe down its back. I apologized to the frog for not saving it once I found it.

happy belly button day Nancy!

Rain, but not much... .4 Dawn, if we can't have it, hope you finally got some.

Temperature is in the sixties, but we all know that won't last... just enough to make the humidity worse. Will have to keep a close eye on the big Cherokee Purples we have hanging on the vines out there.

My first thought this morning was how much did it rain? I know it rained. I heard it. I went to the door and could see it. The patio was wet, not just sprinkles, but wet. This morning the rain gauge is dry. Things that would normally catch water are dry. But it is quite cool out. A good day to work in the garden. We got another cattle panel yesterday. So four more go up today. We got some sulfur, too. We went to Atwoods, and the pump sprayer I got at Lowes was only 3.99. I knew I'd seen it somewhere cheap.

I think a deep watering today. Maybe fertilize.

George, I have seeds at various stages on a parsnip from last year. When are they mature enough to remove from the plant?

DH fixed the dryer yesterday. There was cursing and grunting. He broke a thermal fuse putting it back together and had to go to Tulsa to get the part, but they had it in stock and that made him happy.

Why am I so disturbed by the frog and snake stories? I'm not a good circle of life kind of person. I disturbed a garter snake yesterday and thought you leave the frogs alone. I rarely see frogs or toads.

DH lived near someplace where there were peacocks. Their call sounds like someone crying for help. The kids were always upset by this. One time his sister called the police about someone crying for help. She got in trouble because she was supposed to know better.

Rebecca, it's nice out today. Hope you feel better.

Nancy, my new joints don't hurt except for occasional achiness when the weather changes. I've had cataract surgery, too, so add that to my bionic-ness. My dad's had both knees and a hip replaced, Mom had a hip replaced, my brother and sister, both younger than me have had hips replaced. I think I was pretty well doomed by genetics.

Time to get busy.

Sadly. No rain. Hopefully Dawn is getting some. We have groups of friends driving through Texas to get on a cruise ship and from their fb posts, there's flooding and crazy amounts of rain. Only if we could have just gotten one little inch of rain. Just one. It is so nice outside though, but we have people coming for dinner so I must focus on making my house less dirty.

I'm sorry you're so dry over there, HJ and other dry friends. Hoping for some rain for all of you. I have to focus on making my yard less messy--and a little tiny bit inside. And figure out what's for dinner for company. What's on for dinner at your house? LOL . Maybe I can copycat you.

Amy, yeah I'd say your genetics bit you, too. BUMMER for all of you!! Almost halfway done mowing, just stopped by to say hi everybody. And Amy, how right you are--gorgeous weather for yard and garden work!

Having Jamaican style brown stewed fish (whole Crappie substituted for the snapper due to the extreme shortage of red snapper in local lake Wister) Just finished it as we speak.

W/ sauteed fresh tomatoes, onions,carrots and garlic. over Jasmine rice.

A little salad of lettuce, endive, bright lights swiss chard, osnion tops, cucumbers and pink tomatoes with red wine vinegar/oil

Washed down with iced black tea.

Burp.

And, todays pickle progress. Going for the big jar next.

I said Woman, you going to walk a mile for a Camel
Or are you going to make like Mr Chesterfield and satisfy?
She said That all depends on what your packing
Regular or king size Jake and Elwood

Healthy healthy healthy yummy stuff, Jerry!!!

Taking a break and watching Garden Smart. They are featuring old Southern Gardens. Interesting stuff...

Dinner at our house tonight, Nancy, is some sort of pork steak that Tom will smoke in the smoker and then finish on the grill. Not exactly sure how that works. He's the meat cook and eater. I'm making something with potatoes--I might just roast them with some rosemary and olive oil. I'm making zucchini gratin. I'll let you know how it turns out. It's one of those dishes that has lots of ingredients from our gardens: zucchini, onions, garlic, tomatoes, thyme. Speaking of zucchini, it looks like borers have found their way into the plants (back garden), but still no sign of squash bugs back there. Oh, dinner...got side tracked...what else? Uh, coleslaw type of salad and rolls. My friend is bringing a cake 'cause it's her husbands bd tomorrow as well as Tom's bd. We have vanilla ice cream and some leftover homemade ice cream from solstice. It's a great, simple recipe. It tastes like a Wendy's frosty.

Still thinking about NOT growing any squash products next year. Maybe it will make 2019 better for squash. And give me time to make hoops.

Back to work. :)

I adore zucchini gratin!! And gently sauteed zucchni in butter, too. Now with the hugelkultur bed, I can grow some Korean squash next year out there, maybe. I'm nervous about SVB, so decided I'd back off them next year, too. Loving how the sweet potatoes are growing.

You are having LOTS of stuff to eat for dinner!!! A regular smorgasbord! We've been buying mostly pork and chicken lately, since beef is so expensive. But I do have to have my hamburger! So tonight at our house, I decided is beef enchiladas with some of our tomatos and peppers and onions made into salsa and pico de gallo. Usually when we have family type company I tend to make one-pot meals. You are WAY more ambitious, HJ!

Lawn's done--GDW got a lot of weed-whipping done. And it's still lovely weather! No rain in our forecast. It's okay. . . we were blessed with more than our share to date; won't hurt me one little bit to water for a while. But lots of grass clippings to mulch with today with all the rain from the last two weeks! Yay!

I see you got your rain, Dawn, and those of you living in the very south points. That's excellent! But know many of you need it, still!

I just came in from being outside. It is nice, but the sun is still strong. This morning at Cherry Street was wonderful. I got rained on lightly, felt good, but it was just enough to make the car need washing. Can't believe I had to buy all this stuff instead of raiding my own garden for it, but I got tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, carrots, fingerling potatoes, and a cinnamon roll. Came home and put out some new rodent repellent, added more tomato support, started seeds for more basil and some brussles sprouts, transplanted basil and cat grass, watered, and deadheaded zinnias and cosmos. Now, I have work to do inside, but really want a nap.

Patti, There's many ways to fence in a pond to keep snakes out, but none of them would have worked in our case because of the location of our pond right next to the walkway between our house and detached garage. A fence would have prevented the use of the walkway. The next pond will have a snake fence of some sort included.

Basically, you can use a slick/smooth wire fence (they can shimmy up rough fences using the rock spots to propel themselves upward) with 1/4" openings they cannot crawl through. You bury the bottom 5 or 6 inches in firmly packed soil so they cannot slither underneath it, and you angle out the rest of the fence at maybe a 30-degree angle. The fence needs to be probably 3' tall at a minimum. They are not necessarily attractive, though, which is why I didn't put one up in the first place, and we didn't have a snake problem with the lily pond for the first 10 years or so.

Some people use bird netting or deer netting with small openings as a catch fence. For some reason, snakes think they can squeeze through and get caught in the netting. This happens fairly often in my garden when I have low tunnels made from bird netting over the onion plants in Spring to protect the onions from hail.(It sort of make me wish I could put bird netting around the perimeter of the entire garden!). I'll come out to the garden in the morning and find a copperhead or rattlesnake caught up in the netting. Once I had two in the same netting over one bed in the same day. I don't know if they were traveling together, or if one got stuck and then another came along and got stuck. Usually they are dead by the time I find them. While I'm not using the bird netting specifically as a catch fence, it does not upset me to find a dead venomous snake trapped in it when I go out to the garden in the mornings. The drawback to using bird netting as a catch fence is that small lizards, frogs or toads might get themselves caught in the netting as well.

Some people use electrified poultry netting to keep snakes out of a yard, but I wouldn't use that near a pond.

Here's more info on snake fencing:

Snake Fencing

Nancy, I hope your birthday was wonderful and fun and relaxing.

We got rain! A whole 1.2". I was thrilled. Tim is even more thrilled because he won't have to mow today. We still are cool today for June and sort of cloudy, but we hit 99 degrees yesterday, so cool and cloudy is appreciated today.

Now we have mud. I'm not complaining! We still are 5 or 6" short of what would be average rainfall for Jan-June, but a couple of weeks ago we were about 8" short, so at least the situation is improving. I understand some folks had hail, torrential rainfall, more wind than we had and a few houses set on fire by lightning, but that was all on the Texas side of the river (as far as I know). The garden has looked so hot and dry and tired lately even though I have watered it quite a bit, so hopefully this rainfall and break in the high temperatures will perk it up a bit.

Bon, I kinda like skinny, pretty snakes as long as they are not venomous and are not trying to eat our chicks.

Millie, Well .4 is better than nothing. I know you probably needed more, but anything is better than nothing. The temperatures are heavenly today, aren't they?

Amy, I try not to interfere too much in the circle of life, but it does bother me that toads, frogs and lizards often are preyed upon by snakes. I just cannot help it. I like seeing toads, frogs and lizards in the garden. Snakes in the garden? Nope. Don't like it at all.

Wow, it does sound like you were doomed by genetics. It is amazing how many people in your family have had hip replacements.

Hazel, I know that there was flooding on I-35 in the Gainesville area this morning. We saw it and avoided getting hung up in the traffic backup by exiting onto the service road. I am sure there's more flooding further south because the rain just pounded parts of Texas last night---and plenty of parts of Texas were dry and needed the rain, if not the flooding.

Jerry, The food looks yummy.

Hazel, Tell Tom that Tim and I are wishing him a Happy Birthday. I hope y'all have fun tonight with your friends. The food you're making sounds yummy too.

When I looked at the radar before I went to bed last night, I thought the rain might stay west of us and I fell asleep thinking we likely wouldn't get much rain. Around 4 or maybe 5 a.m., thunder and lightning woke me up. Jersey promptly popped up from her dog bed wanting to go outside right then. I think hearing rain makes her feel like she has to urinate. So, she and the two younger dogs went out and frolicked in the rain for about 15 minutes before she would come back in, so maybe she just likes to play in the rain? Sometimes dogs are just silly.

We have been without rain for so long that when I hear it in the early morning, I'm content to lie in bed and listen to the raindrops on the roof, but Jersey has other ideas. We have had rain twice in the last week, which is astonishing after going without it for so long. I hope that central OK's turn comes soon. We've had times like you're having now where the rain falls all around us but misses us and that's no fun at all. It can get depressing to see endless heat and sunshine with no rain relief for weeks on end.

I am not going to work in the garden today. I have a ton of tomatoes to process so I might do that later today. Or tomorrow. Rain makes me lazy and puts me in the mood to take an afternoon nap.

Dawn

I swear to gollies, I was just gonna post a question about snake-proofing. It's only a matter of time, I believe. This snake proofing sounds complicated and expensive. I guess I'll learn to be defensive.

How wide should I make my new walkways/paths? Garden is way too crowded for me and venomous snakes as is.

bon

Never heard of "Happy belly button" day, but makes perfect sense. How long are the beds you're having walkways through, Bon? Look forward to what you think and what others think. There is the garden way too crowded aspect. . . but funny, because I was wishing our raised bed walkways were narrower--need gardening space!

I leave tomorrow and since the husband isn't gardener-friendly, I made sure to water everything well. That way he can go out and "water" while I'm gone and most things should still be alive. Down side to summer camps, they always fall in the middle of garden season.

Isn't she purty?! The first fall we were here I spied this tiny rose shoot growing next to the patio. I knew it wouldnt survive the dogs, so I dug it up and planted it in my garden area. Last summer it got watered and weeded, and this year it's shot up to almost 3ft high. I figure if it's that determined to grow, least I can do is encourage it along. Now to wait and see if it blooms.

And another volunteer who sprung up from last year's tomatoes. I think it was a bush cherry type, so we'll see what fruit this one makes.

Dawn, Lawton got 1 inch of rain, so we thought we were just on the Eastern edge of it and that it had missed you... so glad I was wrong. We managed 2 inches of rain for June, unless more comes before the end of the month. Could have been worse. Raymond keeps a running total on the calendar for each month.

Guys, I believe in live and let live as far as wildlife goes... just don't plan on making a meal of what's mine or startle me. I don't have a deep fear of snakes, but also don't have a sense of humor when dealing with them. Right now I am thinking that the only good squirrel is a dead squirrel. LOL We have already seen one making off with a peach... I would like to be the first to get a peach from the first crop. Knowing squirrels, they will have taken them all before they can get ripe. We have tied scare tapes to the tree, treated the top of the fence and limb he jumps to with hot pepper sauce. Also the tree trunk. Next will be bags of moth balls and human hair as soon as I can pick up the little net bags. I spent 33 years being a feeding station for wildlife in MO when surrounded by National forest. I grafted named variety (thin shelled) walnuts onto native trees, also Carpathian walnut to wild black walnut. Was never allowed to taste one of my Carpathians and most of the good black walnuts were taken. Then they had the audacity to bark at me when I dared come outside. Danged tree rats.

PS... did ya know that coyotes would eat apples? Got up one morning, in the late fall, to find 5 piles of poop with red apple skins in my driveway. Sure they were windfalls, but between the Eagles and the Coyotes I had to escort my toy poodles out to do their business. That pack had spent a good bit of time in the yard "singing" that night. After I lost my husband and there was less activity in the yard, the wildlife began to move in for real.

You and me both, mil! Somewhere they're having a fried green tomato party, and I'm not invited. None of those tricks have worked here yet either, although I haven't tried the mothballs yet. Hmm...

Bon, In the pastures where the snakes can disappear in tall grass so easily, we mow 6' wide paths so we can walk through the pastures while leaving most of the grasses/forbs intact for all the wild things. In the garden, our paths are only 2' wide. I'm comfortable with that. If you are worried you might need more space for the kids, you could go to 3'. Snakes can be really good at blending in with mulch, so keep that in mind. It is my least favorite thing about mulch.

Jen, I hope you enjoy your week at camp and that the plants survive a week of your husband's attention. It is so hard for those of us who garden to go away for a while and trust someone else with our plant babies.

Millie, I'm so glad you got rain too. I feel guilty when it rains here and I know that other people were missed by the rain. I know that is silly, but I can't help it.

I'm not a huge fan of squirrels either. They are just endlessly greedy and seem to take a lot more food than they might actually need. So far, the 8' tall garden fence seems to exclude them. It certainly isn't that they couldn't climb the fence, or squeeze through it because they can, but just that they don't. They do annoy me in autumn by planting acorns and pecans everywhere which means in the springtime we are mowing down bazillions of tiny tree seedlings, but they mostly plant them in shrub beds, not in the veggie garden.

Coyotes relentlessly devour fruit. I've decided their taste buds are not like ours because they will eat green persimmons by the dozens. When walking the dogs, we'd come across endless mounds of coyote scat filled with persimmon seeds even in late Spring or early Summer when the fruit is nowhere near ripening. They also are hard on melons, but the garden fence has put a halt to them getting our melons. Friends who grow them in open fields suffer heavy melon losses to the coyotes. I think they will eat just about anything.

Y'all, please do not use mothballs in the garden. They are highly toxic and you shouldn't even be inhaling their fumes indoors, much less outdoors in the heat. If you read the labels, you'll see that mothballs are meant to be used indoors within a confined space for one purpose only and that is to control moths on/in clothing----that is a safety thing because the manufacturers and the government want the mothball fumes contained within the confined space so people will not inhale the fumes. Mothballs are a registered pesticide and are meant to be used only in the way the label specifies---by law. I'd give up gardening before I'd use something as toxic as mothballs. The last thing you want to do is to contaminate your air space, soil or groundwater with moth balls. Peoplle have died from using mothballs improperly indoors, which is testament to how toxic they are.

Safe Alternatives To Using Mothballs in the Garden

Mothballs. . . XXXXXXXX. So tickled you got rain, Dawn. . . small token in this season of drought for ya, but glad you got it.

Squirrels=fluffy-tailed rats, in my opinion, presently. Once I did have a squirrel friend. Named her Ngaio. She trotted along my yard fence, then hopped down and I threw her food gifts, and she almost came up to eat out of my hand but not quite. I was quite fond of her. And she was the only one, and the last one. Then I lived in an adorable but old (1920's) house with a poorly designed porch/basement entryway added on with a cheap ceiling and inadequately built attic/roof. The squirrels came in by the dozens. It was a nightmare--and now down here, they got into the shop attic and into our next-door neighbor's heat venting system and created enormous problems. And they tear down our bird feeders. I have no sympathy or compassion now. Their population exploded, needs to be thinned out. Apparently there aren't enough natural predators in the animal kingdom, so we're it. Show up at our bird feeders at your own risk, squirrels. GDW shoots 1-2 nearly every day, and finally after 3 months, not so many are showing up. They still show up in the front yard by the dozens. To me, this signifies significant overpopulation by squirrels. Must be a banner year for them. Do I like killing animals or creatures. No. But neither will I stand by to let them destroy our small property.

Speaking of, voles. We're still fighting the good fight, and are holding them at bay, I think. There are only half as many vole holes out front as there were 2 months ago. But so funny, where the voles have vacated half of the front lawn, the moles have moved back in. Sigh. Never thought I'd be so happy to see moles tearing up the lawn. LOL

Our "13-yr old great grand-daughter" showed up late this afternoon with her family. Busy evening, and she was wound up and ready to gab when her parents and little 2 yr old sis left. I was so tired, because I did work so very hard today. And y'all know (by the way, first time I've actually said y'all. . . . are you laughing?) how when youngsters can get to gabbing on and on, you just kinda look at them and think, who are you, what is this nonsense your babbling about and why can't I just have it be quiet. . . . well, I finally told her at about 9:30 that I needed to spend some time alone and doing Bible study and reading up on my friends' posts and she said okay, and then was back here 10 minutes later babbling about nonsense. So I shut down the computer, and said, "So, Kaida, what have you been doing this summer since school got out." What followed was a 2-hour conversation, in depth, with so many important, revealing, and pertinent topics discussed. With such unexpected depth from her--with so many important topics discussed. With the unexpected trust she has given, and my thankfulness for her trust. What an amazing evening. I feel so blessed and am so very touched and thrilled to have this young person here.

And apparently she has no plans to leave in the near future!! Hahahahaha. Heck, Kaida might be here for the rest of the summer! LOL . Not really, but the deal was that she's going back home when we're tired of having her here!! Cracks me up. Oh dear, I am a sucker for kids!

Oh. BTW, Dawn. I totally agree. There is no way on God's green earth that I can be a great-grandparent. This is an inherited great grandchild. . . going with the territory in my relatively new life. But I'm blessed to have her and and parents. I think it's pretty funny having a couple great-grandchildren, even if by proxy. I love em all, every one--my new "step" children, new "step-grandchildren, and even new step great grandchildren!" And love and miss my own origional son and family in MN.

Dawn, did you know that they used to sell paradichlorobenzene as a treatment for borers in stone fruits, with the instructions to dig around the tree in late September and apply the stuff.. then pull dirt back in to trap the gas? The idea was to kill whatever laid the eggs that turned into borers. As long as they sold it as paradichlorobenzene they felt justified to put a price tag on it that was nearly $30.00 for a one pound can. I guess the manufacturers of moth balls must not have pockets as deep as many of the other chemical companies. For that matter, has anyone ever wondered why, a few years ago, Uncle Sam went to court and fined the tobacco industry huge sums of money, but still subsidize it?

Nancy, you made me remember why I said, "no thanks" to an offer to take me to see great grands last night. Last time I was there all I heard was drama... all of it just nonsense. Everything must go their way or it's drama time with teenage girls. Come to think of it, the 46 year old grand isn't much better.

Y'all, I'm so sorry. I didn't really catch up and I know that I'm missing good stuff. Part of me feels like I should just be absent, but I want to check in and stay connected...at least a little.

I did see that Dawn and Tim said HB to Tom. Tom says "Thanks!"

One of the couples who came over last night also garden. That was nice. They noticed that my peppers on the west side of my house have sun scalded. Hmmm...I wondered why the fruit looked like that. Never seen that before.

This is strange...my zucchini and summer squash suddenly wilted and the fruit got mushy, BUT they were putting out new and green foliage. I looked closely at them today--no squash bugs. No squash bug eggs. However, the were infested with SVB. SO, they have been pulled out and thrown away.

And now I have one 8ft bed and another bed that has a 6'x4' space. What would y'all put in it? I added compost and they are ready to plant. They other bed in the back garden is about to finish up. I just have cabbage in it. I've already planted watermelon seeds, but they haven't come up yet, so I might need to replant.

I cleaned up the Korean squash tonight. Found 4 adult squash bugs and 2 juvenile bugs. Also, one leaf with eggs. Usually when you find juveniles, there's tons of them, but these two were different sizes and loners. I wonder if I dropped a couple of eggs previously when cleaning them off the leaves. This squash is looking a little ragtag, but it keeps putting out new leaves. And it's putting out new little squash. No signs of SVB there. Thank goodness. Hoping for the best.

Our field is turning brown. Grasshoppers are hanging out in my garden. I am squishing them if I find them. I hate that. ick.

Just need some rain.

Nancy, I used to wonder aloud, even here on this forum, how it was that 10 of our 14.4 acres are heavily wooded and yet we rarely saw a squirrel. It wasn't that I was complaining, but it just seemed odd. I suppose the dogs we had in our early years scared them away. Well, the old dogs don't scare them and this year we have tons of them. I agree they are just rodents with bushy tails. I have been ignoring them in the yard, but if they start getting in the garden, they are going to be in trouble.

Long, long ago we raised a baby squirrel using kitten milk replacer and the tiny bottle that comes with it. We never knew what happened to its mother, but had had a vicious thunderstorm and this baby probably fell out of a squirrel nest and she didn't come find it. It was so small that Chris, who was probably 13 or 14 at the time, walked around wearing a pocket t-shirt with the squirrel riding in the pocket. It spent the rest of its time in a hamster cage or being bottle fed. Later on it transitioned to a nut/fruit/seed blend meant for birds. Finally, when it seemed large enough to release, he'd put the squirrel outdoors in the morning for ever-lengthening periods of time (just like hardening off plants, lol), but whenever he went outside to check on it, it would run to him and come back indoors. One day, it didn't come back and we knew it had successfully gone back into the wild. That was a relief. I didn't want to have a pet squirrel in a cage in the house forever. Nowadays, I don't know if anyone in this family would want to get up at night to bottle feed a tree rat.

Y'all do seem heavily overpopulated by squirrels this year. If the nut-bearing native trees up there produced as heavily last fall as they did down here, that's the reason why. We had so many acorns from the oak trees that walking in the yard was like trying to walk on marbles or golf balls, depending on the oak variety. We swept and raked up and composted acorns by the thousands all autuman and winter, and those were just from the yard, not the entire woodland. If the hickories, walnuts and pecans produced as heavily in the woodland as the oaks did, I'm surprised we don't have 1 billion squirrels.

I'm afraid your battle with the voles and moles (and do you have gophers too?) will be constant, but I'm glad you're seeing fewer of them. I haven't found much vole damage in the garden yet, but they've been in there. Every now and then Pumpkin catches one and brings it out of the garden to play cat-and-mouse with it in the yard (endlessly) and I rarely see a dead vole, so I'm worried he is doing catch-and-release when we gets tired of playing with it. The good thing is that vole populations cycle up and down in roughly 2 to 5 year cycles, so some years will be better, though other years may be worse.

Kaida sounds absolutely so precious and it touches my heart so much that she clearly adores you and trusts you and will sit and open her heart up to you and share all her thoughts, dreams, feelings and more. Someones when somebody remarries later on in life, the family is not so accepting of/loving towards the new spouse, but clearly they all have embraced you as their own and that is special too. Kaida herself sounds like she is such a precious gift and I know you surely treasure her in your life. I'm glad you're a sucker for kids. I know you will not regret one moment spent with her this summer and, hey, now you've got two more hands available for weeding! You certainly inherited a fine bunch of folks in the younger generations when you married Garry, so surely your life overflows with many blessings. I know it doesn't make you miss your son and his family back in MN any less, but it is nice to have the new kids, grandkids and great-grandkids geographically closer to you, isn't it?

Millie, I didn't know that. What a horrible thing to use around edible plants! I do know that many, many products that once sold and widely used have been banned. When I was a kid, they sprayed DDT as the solution to everything. I always hated that stuff, but we were stupid kids, and when the big tanker truck was driving up and down all our local streets spraying for mosquitoes in the 1960s, we idiot children road our bicycles behind in the mist coming from that truck. It is a wonder we aren't all dead. My dad never used many chemicals, and as he got older, he progressively used them less and less until he was almost to the point of being organic by the time Alzheimer's Disease stole his mind and he gave up gardening because he no longer remembered how to do it. The few chemicals he used, he kept in a chest in the garage and we knew we were not even allowed to open the door to that thing.

Our government does a lot of crazy things, and I just try to ignore it and them as much as possible. The tobacco thing is perplexing, but it is what it is--a sign of how dysfunctional our federal govenment has become, not that our state government is any better either.

Hazel, If I had to choose between garden time and internet time, the garden would win every time. Since I'm home all day, I usually have time for both.

Peppers are prone to sunscald in our climate. The plants can produce more fruit than their foliage can cover. When I see that happening, I try to remember to give them some extra nitrogen and extra water to push more foliar growth. When you first notice sunscalded peppers, if you bring them inside, you can cut out the bad part and use the rest of the pepper. If you don't notice the sunscald until later on, often the fruit will begin rotting inside from the damage. I harvested a laundry basket full of peppers last week and threw away maybe 3 bell peppers that had sunscald so badly that they were unusable, but was able to salvage and use most of several others that were only mildly sunscalded.

I'm sorry to hear about the SVBs. It seems to be happening a lot in your part of the state over the last week or two. I keep thinking every morning as I walk down to the garden that today will be the day that I lose my first squash plant to an SVB, but it hasn't happened yet. It will happen any time though. There's some squash bugs and I'm trying to control them, but it is an annoying and time-consuming task. Hand-picking squash bugs and drowning them is effective, but while I'm doing it, there's a little voice inside my head screaming "ain't nobody got time for that". lol. It is true, but I take the time and do it anyway. Right now the temperatures are cool enough that I don't mind spending some morning time on squash bug destruction, but the deeper we get into summer and the hotter the weather gets, I know I will mind doing it and at some point I'll just stop doing it. We just do not have enough good natural pests of squash bugs, leaf-footed bugs, blister beetles or stink bugs, so keeping a garden free of them is virtually impossible. Well, maybe people who use chemical pesticides can do it, but that's not me and I won't go that route.

In my newly open spaces, I'm planting fall tomatoes and more southern peas. Always, always southern peas because we like them and because they tolerate heat so well. I've already got too much okra, winter squash, watermelons and melons, so southern peas it will be. Is there anything you want more of but haven't planted yet? If so, that's what I would plant in your newly available garden beds. You could go ahead and plant green beans now for a fall harvest. It is a touch early for them down here, but I've had good luck some years from a late June planting of them. At the worst, they'll start blooming in hot weather and not produce much until the weather cools in late August or early September, but if we get periodic cool and rainy spells, sometimes they will produce all summer long.

I hope rain finds y'all soon. It is ridiculous how long your part of the state has gone now without meaningful rainfall. Here's the map that illustrates it pretty well:

Consecutive Days Without 0.25" of Rain

It is shocking that the month of the year that generally is the rainiest has brought central OK somewhere between nothing and next-to-nothing in terms of inches of rainfall. The end of May wasn't much better, was it?

We slipped into Moderate Drought 2 weeks ago, then two good rainfalls brought part of our county back out of it and back to Abnormally Dry last week. Oops. I never did the Drought Monitor post last week, so here's the latest Oklahoma Drought Monitor map:

OK Drought Monitor

And, for forum members who live outside of OK, here's the US Drought Monitor Map:

U S Drought Monitor Map

Honestly, as a gardener, by the time that the powers-that-be show us as being Abnormally Dry, we already are so dry that I almost cannot water enough to make a difference so to some extent, it doesn't matter to me what stage we're in each week, because they're all bad and all challenging to the garden plants. However, once we hit Severe Drought I stop watering everything but the perennials because I can't water enough to push production out of annual veggie plants once we are that dry. Even in Moderate Drought, sometimes it feels like the watering is only keeping plants alive, but not really keeping them in production.

The good news is that summer is actually here now, and it doesn't last forever, so we can start hoping for an early autumn cooldown and the return of more plentiful moisture. Keeping plants happy in July and early August in OK surely is incredibly challenging even in just a normal run-of-the-mill year, much less in a drought year.

Dawn

Dawn, I keep on thinking and saying, I was in the woods too long. LOL When we found a piece of land that had sat idle for 40 years and knew the old man who died there probably had never had enough money to buy or use chemicals on the place, we felt like we had struck gold as far as the soil was concerned. Anyway, we composted, hauled in rabbit manure, wood lathe turnings from a handle factory not far away, etc. The only way we could find the old garden was by the rocks tossed into the old fence row, and an old man who told us that he had lived with the people who had the place when he was very young... said it had the best garden in the area. Once the larger trees were cut out and stumps burned into the ground, DH tilled as much as possible and we raked that soil up into, maybe, 4 inch deep beds to grow on. It probably took 3 or 4 years before the tree roots were dug out, broken up by tilling, pulled, etc. We had a Troy Built Horse ... not much else would have handled that.

I have not read the warnings on the moth ball box, so have no idea what it says. Did not consider it being a problem just hanging in a tree as a deterrent. I would have thought that it would end up in the air eventually when used in a closed up chest or trunk as it was used with woolens back when. Haven't seen him out there anymore, so maybe the hot pepper sauce and/or scare tape has helped. Now if we can keep the boat tailed grackles out of the tomatoes. Never had them in the back yard before this year.

We are thinking that we will plant some test bean seeds here and there in the beds this fall. I would kind of like to know what to plan for next spring.

Moth balls are super bad. They offgas dangerous chemicals into the air. Some people have died just from inhaling the fumes within their own homes because they didn't follow the label directions properly and fumes filled their homes. It is a common recommendation to use them in gardens, mostly because folks don't understand how dangerous they can be. Cats, in particular, are very vulnerable to the fumes, and so are children.

One thing all of us gardeners have to remember is that we shouldn't recommend things to other people that might be unsafe, and using mothballs in any way other than their recommended, label-specified usage is considered very unsafe (and also illegal, not that I think anyone here would come back and sue us for recommending an off-label usage of a pesticide). If I ran the world, (laughing as I say that), mothballs would be outlawed period.

I'm picky about out garden and won't hardly use anything at all in it. It is where I spend my time. It is the food we eat, the flowers we have in vases on tables, the plants that our birds and toads, butterflies and lady bugs, etc., etc., visit. I don't want any sort of chemical thing on any of our food, herbs, fruits or flowers. I can tell people what chemicals they can use to treat different issues if they are having problems, but generally won't use those myself---not even the organic products. The older I get, the more I feel that our food supply must be kept as pure as possible. It is a personal choice, but as someone who's already had cancer once, I try to minimize my exposure to pesticides as much as possible. My dad was once a heavy user of pesticides, miticides, fungicides and herbicides. With every year that passed, he used less and less of them and I couldn't tell that his garden's performance was affected at all. I try to keep that in mind when I see something in the garden that might drive me to use a 'cide' of some sort.