You're looking at most of what I have going right now, unfortunately. Last year at this time I was picking cucumbers. You can see this year's cukes in the middle left of that pic. They are just sprouts. Nothing will grow without sunshine, even when I keep it from freezing at night. Thank you for the compliment, but my idea of huge is 10x what I have now. This high tunnel is 14x48 with a gravel floor. The new one I just built is 18.5x48', but does not have the plastic on it yet, because I don't have enough plants to fill it. I bought ground cover cloth for the floor and a friend gave me some pallets, but beyond that I have not ordered everything yet. My plan up to now had been to use 11-gallon grow bags fed with an automated drip system. That would have been perfect in last year's weather. This year, we are so far into spring that I am starting to wonder if I'll have enough time to get a crop of tomatoes before the weather hits 95+ degrees. When that happens, I get thick skins and bitter fruit. All I can think of to do would be to just bury the entire container or root ball into the ground at that point. I like your idea with the cover and the light bulbs. Notice that you are three zones north of me and your plants look farther along than mine. Do they stretch at all toward the bulbs? I don't see yours doing that, but my worry would be that mine somehow would.

There were no signs of an animal scrapping dirt over the bird to that pretty much rules out cats and dogs. I hadn't considered beetles but that is a possibility. It probably was some type of insect now that I think about it more. Tony, seeing that bird dragged halfway into the ground did remind me of that movie! It's been years since I last saw it on TV but I've seen it more times then I can remember. Marcia, thanks for the reassurance. I didn't really think it was a rattler since I've eliminated from my yard most of the type of areas that rattlers prefer to live in like brush/wood piles and the such. Plus the area I found the bird in is really open with nothing but short grass growing there. Not the kind of place most snakes like to hang around. Some people a couple blocks over found some pygmy rattlers in their horse barn once, and my cat brought home a live coral snake once but that was years ago. No one has encountered a venomous snake around here for years. Plenty of non-venomous snakes though! I did wonder if the culprit might be some type of blind snake that lives it's entire life underground. In the past, we have found some of the pink snakes that look kind of look like fishing lures when we've been digging in the yard. I didn't think they got big enough the consider going after a bird though, even a small bird.

Dave Pehling, extension agent Snohomish County, has good directions on trapping. I think they are on line but he emailed them to me when I couldn't get the mountain beaver here the way I was doing the trapping. You need to place the trap right at/almost in the entrance to the active burrow in the early evening. There should be no way around it. I wiggled the wire trap floor slightly into the loose dirt at the burrow opening. Make sure the trigger works easily and the door will still close. Then cover the whole trap and burrow opening with some dark covering.We used an old rug. That way the critter just tootles up out of the burrow and is in the cage before it even realizes it. I caught ours the first time that I did the trapping correctly. You need to check for the active entrance first. Place a small dry twig upright in the middle of the entrance hole. If it gets broken or moved you know that is the active hole. Sometime you can see the plants from your garden partially dragged into the hole. Some have back doors, using one as entrance and another for exit. You have my sympathy, I lost whole cardiocrinum, oriental lillies, gunnera and more! Just watched a show on TV about how whole ecosystems have changed just because large predators have been eliminated.

Good question HH :). As to jewels....I found a pretty little pearl broach (antique) in a townhouse we purchased a few years ago. I still have it...they were drug dealers who were thrown out by the PO and they and the other six people who roomed in the place trashed an already trashed place. It took a six person cleaning crew a week to clean it up including all of the broken glass (because why not break the windows before you go right?). I don't care if it was the druggies grandmothers broach...karma left it in the place and I wasn't hunting down drug dealers. So that's a good and bad story. My other townhouse is more fun. We purchased within a few hours of listing despite the place being overpriced because I wrote the contract at asking price or bank approved appraised value, which ever was the lesser knowing that it would appraise about fifty grand lower than our offer. That man thought he was so smart lol he had his brother do the appraisal :). But it was not a huge town...people knew of the relationship so the bank rejected the appraisal and did another, coming in exactly where I said it would. He tried to get out if the contract so we sued for breach...ugly ugly but we won of course. So out if bitterness I guess he removed the horrific chandelier from the dining room which he said his wife carried on her lap on the plane from a castle in Hungary. I don't know why she bothered because you can buy them all day long at lows for about 22 bucks but whatever....it saved the price of removing it from our costs lol. They also left the new fridge and washer and dryer (not addressed in the contract either way). They didn't have time to take them because we had forced closing before they started packing the day prior to moving (they thought that we would give up). They came back two months later saying their kids wanted them for their new house so they would go ahead and take them now. I laughed and suggested they try a better storage facility and closed the door. Those appliances didn't come close to our legal fees and weren't going anywhere. Then there is this house....we purchased lock, stock and barrel. Not only did they bake a quiche and leave it in the fridge with juice, coffee and creamer but they left a dozen roses in a silver vase that belonged to the original owner on the dining room table with two glasses, a cheese plate and a bottle of wine. They also left a toy on the table for our son and a few others were hidden around the house for him. The house was spotless with freshly made beds and fully stocked bathrooms. If I ever buy a house again I'm going to pay someone to do that for me again lol. It was heaven!!!!