Tara, I was torn between whether to give you the quick and easy practical answer, or the longer and more detailed explanation that might help you baby the plants along for a few more weeks. So, here's both: QUICK & EASY ANSWER: Extreme heat has set in this week and the cabbage plants aren't going to like it. You can try to keep them growing a bit longer by shading them. Be sure you let them have 3-4 hours of early morning sun and then full to dappled shade the rest of the day. Keep them well-mulched. You may or may not succeed in this effort. It is hard to say because the plants likely have had a lot of heat already. MORE IN-DEPTH ANSWER: This is a hard question to answer without knowing how much hot air and high soil temperatures the plants already have endured. In general, shading cool season plants will help extend their life a little bit, but it would have worked better for the cabbage if you'd begun shading them before your high temperatures starting exceeding about 75 degrees. When you wait until the temperatures are approaching 90 degrees, the cabbages likely already have had a lot of exposure to temperatures they don't particularly like. At this point, you might as well try shading them if you can. It won't hurt them, and still might help them---but not if they've already had too much heat. If I was trying to shade cabbage plants this late in the season, I'd let them have exposure to full sun only until about 10 a.m. Here at our house today, it already was 85 degrees by 10 a.m., so if I was trying to keep cabbage plants alive and growing with partial shade, they likely would have been whining and hollering for the shade by 9 a.m.....but you have to let them have 3 or 4 hours of sun at a minimum so they'll keep growing and form heads, if they can, in this heat. You can use shade cloth, commonly sold at nurseries and in the garden centers of big box stores. Often it is custom-cut for you and comes on big bolts and priced by the running foot. The first shade cloth I ever bought was folded and sold in a flat pack. I believe it was 6' wide x 50' long and I bought it at Sam's Club quite a few years back. Shade Clothe comes in different weaves that allow different amounts of light penetration--I use 50% shade cloth on the greenhouse and 40% shade cloth in the garden for heat-sensitive plants. If you just want to experiment with shading without spending money on shade cloth, you can use an old bed sheet or sheer to semi-sheer curtain. In future years, if you want to use shading to prolong a cool-season crop, start using the shading when temperatures are a little under 80 degrees in order to keep the plants a little cooler. It also helps the plants a lot if their soil is well-mulched. Garden soil that has 2 to 4" (or more) of good thick dense mulch on top of it can easily stay 20 to 30 degrees cooler, or sometimes even 40 degrees cooler, than unmulched soil in full sun. I was working in a new garden plot in very late April and early May, trying to finish the fencing, put up the trellises, etc. and get planting done. Obviously, nothing was mulched yet since we were barely getting plants in the ground. On one unseasonably hot day as I was transplanting cucumber plants into the ground, our soil temperature was so hot that it was unpleasant to touch the soil with a bare hand. As soon as I finished planting that day, I cut the lawn grass and used the clippings to mulch the planted portions of the garden. Now, every time we mow, I layer new grass clippings on top of the old. Our older, established garden already was mulched well-enough before we started working on the new garden plot, so this year, the new garden is getting most of the grass clipping mulch. By the time soil temperatures are exceeding 100 degrees here, I should have mulch on the ground thick enough to keep the soil about 20-30 degrees cooler than the air temp. Cabbage is a cool season crop and is happiest when the daytime highs are in the 60s, which is why we need to plant it about 4-6 (or even 8) weeks before the date of our average last frost. As you have undoubtedly noticed, we often go from 'too cold' to 'too hot' practically overnight here, which makes it tricky to get a good yield from cool-season crops. Planting them early is the key. The later you plant, the harder it will be to get a good yield. However, if we plant too early, the cold can cause them to bolt...so it is challenging. You have the extra challenge of having a precious child who destroyed your seedlings. It happens. Pets, children, etc. can be hard on our plants. I always raise extra from seed and try (not always successfully since cats can jump and climb) to keep them out of the reach of anyone who might accidentally destroy them. The good news is that with shading and mulching, cabbage seems to tolerate more heat than you'd expect. However, by heat, I mean maybe temperatures creeping into the low 80s, and not so much the low 90s. DIfferent varieties tolerate heat at different levels. I always try to choose varieties known for their heat tolerance and that have fairly short DTMs. Even then, sometimes the heat just arrives too early. Some years I have had cabbage happily tolerate a lot of heat in June. Other years, it has caused the heads to get puffy or the plants to begin splitting in order to send up a stem to flower. I usually plant far more cabbage than we need and start harvesting small heads in March. As the season goes on, we are harvesting and eating progressively larger heads up to a point. Then, when the heat arrives, I tend to harvest them on the small side again to get them out of the heat. This year has been a mixed bag of results. Some plants formed heads pretty early and were harvested early. Some were slow to form heads. Some didn't form heads at it. At our house, what do we say about such uneven results? Of course, we blame them on the weather, but we also just shrug and say "it is one of those years". Since the stonehead already has headed up, I'd go ahead and harvest it and use it. High temperatures can make cabbage go downhill fast and sometimes affect its flavor. I'd shade the Bonnie hybrid and try to baby it along for a few more weeks so it gets at least a fighting chance to make the head it is trying to form. The red types in general are slower than the green types to form heads. This year I had full-sized green heads while the red varieties were just sitting there in their leafy glory. They did finally head up too but it seemed to take forever, even though, according to their DTMs, they should have been heading up at the same time as some of the green varieties. I just think the reds are more stubborn. Reds grow great in fall, as do all cabbages, but you have to transplant young cabbage seedlings into the ground in August in order to get heads before really cold temperatures set in. If your red cabbage doesn't start trying to form a head in the next 7-10 days, it likely won't form one because the heat will just be too much for it, even with shading. Hope this helps, Dawn

Oh my goodness! That face brings back memories of a Thanksgiving many years ago. Everything and everyone, family and friends-34 in all- was ready for the feast. The 22 pound turkey was sitting on the counter, ready to be brought in to the dining room. DH went to the kitchen to get it when he came back in and was quietly but frantically trying to get my attention. Turned out he found the platter and the turkey on the floor, both in many pieces. There were a lot of little kids running around, so at first we thought one of them had pulled it down. Until we noticed our Irish Setter, Shannon, standing in a corner of the hallway, tail dragging, refusing to look at us. A quick check of her muzzle told the story. Dinner that day consisted of a couple of canned hams, quickly sliced and heated, and all the usual turkey trimmings. No one went hungry (least of all, Shannon) and it made for a story that gets retold every Thanksgiving. Shannon went to the rainbow bridge many years ago now, and we still miss her. Elisabeth

Hello everybody, Unfortunately, I am having a relapse triggered by a family fight I had today. As I mentioned in my first post, my relationship with my mom is not good and she is very disrispectful with my stuff and has thrown away very special things to me. Things that I really treasured. Today, I picked up a carped that my mom had removed almost a year ago. She wanted to throw it away, but the carpet was in good condition and I liked it, so I took it to a place to have it washed and storaged. Today I finally got it back home and put it behind a wall in my living room. It was well hidden and it wasn't taking too much room. My mom saw it and started acting like crazy and told me she was going to throw it away tomorrow. I got angry and she started telling me that I had my stuff all over the house, which is not true, and then mentioned that the fact I put my little dog's stuff, like his plate and little bones in the laundry room was a problem for her to. This made me get very angry and I went down the stairs because I wanted to make sure my dog's stuff were safe. suddenly, my uncle, who was at home for a visit, stood up and got between me and my mother because according to him he thought I was going to hit my mom, which is a terrible lie. He dared me to fight and I told him I was not going to accept his attitude in my house. Then he asked me to go outside and I said: OK. Let's go. Next, my brother showed up and my mom to avoid the fight. Then my brother told me he didn't want to fight because he was much heavier than me and that it was going to be easy for him. I said: Come on, let0's do it. And he refused it and said he loved me. Ever since my parents divorced he has interfered in many of my family's issues that are not concer of his and sometimes he has tried to act like the man of the house. Today was the last straw and made me lose my mind. He has brainwashed my mom several times, my mom almost always does what he tells her to do and of course, he usually takes my moms side. All this conflict made me have a psychiological crisis and miss my little dog a lot since I feel very alone again and I have no friend and partner at home to rely on. I really didn't need this since I was starting to feel better about the loss of my beautiful Guyton, to heal, to rearrange my life without suffering too much and feel more peace. On top of that, my Psychiatrist took the liberty to show my mom and my brother my diagnosis file after a visit my mom and my brother made to his office, which was a terrible violation to my privacy and to the confidentiality respect Mental professionals have to have. It's the most basic and important rule. Now, my mom is using this as a weapon and threatening me to send me to a mental hospital because my Psychiatrist also told her and my brother she could do that. It is just unbelievable. He betrayed me and put me in a very difficult position. Specially now that I am trying to overcome the death of my little dog and my mind is unstable. It just looks he also took my brother's and mom's side and they are their patiens not me. Now I am missing Guyton a lot again and their loss became bigger again too. I am lost and sad again. I really hope you can reply to me. Thank you very much in advance for your help and kindness

Ok, here's the answer to the mystery, lol. EVERYBODY is absolutely correct, and I am guilty of causing the confusion! I was wearing my European hat when I answered this question, having remembered that iliasred (OP) is from Greece. His eggs clusters are from the Pieris brassicae, the Large Cabbage White butterfly.....found all over Europe and the UK, but not (yet) reported in North America. The Small Cabbage White, Pieris rapae, is our pest. It does deposit single, spindle shaped eggs. SO! I'm sorry for the confusion, jean and ron. You were certainly right on with your comments....for North America. I should have been clear about the location of our OP. Actually, it's all iliasred's fault, lol. Just kidding. GG, I humbly thank you for your vote of confidance.