It's about 80, sunny, no wind and my 10-minute count around our 1-acre butterfly sanctuary revealed 68 butterflies- mostly Pipevines, but about 5 Tiger Swallowtails, 2 Red Admirals, 2 Monarchs, 3 Sulfurs, 3 Zebra Swallowtails, 4-5 Silver-spotted Skippers, Juvenals Duskywing, 1 Horaces Duskywing, 2 Cabbage whites, 1 Pearl Crescent. It's the best day so far this year in Camelot. mike

I think I reported on another thread, that I had a woodchuck this year. We were having damage in the yard and it wasn't until last weekend that we saw the woodchuck wandering all over the yard, feasting on the clover that is in our lawn. We chased him and boy are they quick. He was out the fence by the time we were going down the back steps. I was suspecting a woodchuck because last year I met him walking in my gate, as I was sitting in the yard. What was odd though, was that he hardly touched anything last year. This year, I started noticing leaves all chewed up, a few weeks ago then we decided to try blocking the gate with a small picket fence with rocks. That worked fine, until he chewed through the bottom of the pickets along another fence line. We blocked that one up and he just dug under the fence further along. So we stopped trying to keep him out before he wrecked our fence. Soooo....I have read all the posts here and found some of the ideas suggested interesting. I really wanted to deal with the woodchuck right away and not have to worry about him or wonder if what I was using for deterrents was going to work or not. So, I called Critter control that whitegarden mentioned. This is what I was told by Critter Control. They charge quite a bit..which I won't post here...but a significant expense. They have one fee for coming and finding out where he is getting in the yard and they set up multiple traps. Then they charge you another fee for each woodchuck they capture. Then I asked well..if you remove all you can find and we leave the tunnel system, what's to stop another woodchuck from moving in? He said true, so they charge another fee for each hole that they take care of. They fill it with small rocks. So I asked what they do with them and he said they euthanize them. I thought you couldn't trap them or kill them in Massachusetts? He said no, you can't 'kill trap' them. Which I guess he meant a trap that kills them. They 'require' you to euthanize them and not relocate them. I would assume that he must know the law if he is in the business. After hearing all of this, we decided to try something less drastic before considering this as an option. Today we bought some 'coyote urine' at Russell's. We just came in the yard from distributing it. So now we watch and wait. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this will do the trick. It stinks to high heaven if you are right next to it, but supposedly it will fade in a short time then only the animals can smell it. You get little bottles that hang with cotton batten in them and you squirt it into the bottle and get the cotton batten moist, then you hang them every 12 feet around the place you are trying to keep them out of. It is supposed to last a month, but that seems a stretch to me. It cost $10. for the bottle that came with 3 dispenser bottles. You can buy extra bottles but they charge you $1.59 for a little 3" high plastic bottle. Which can add up if you have a large property you are trying to keep them out of. We used 9 bottles in our small yard and it only took care of about 1/4 of the yard where they are doing the most damage. I would think you could come up with your own bottles if you wanted to. I will come back and report how this option is working. I took photos of my poor coneflowers and asters and I was going to post them, but I think you are already plenty familiar with what that looks like. [g]

I'm sorry I didn't get this posted yesterday (Friday), we're at a critical phase with one of the canines. The heat (103F, 112F with the heat index today) is causing some complications for an already very old dog with issues related to age alone. Friday he gave us quite a scare and I didn't even get online to check email, much more cruise any websites. Box - which I will add as much to as possible between now and mailing time, but these things at least I know "for sure" if you will unless otherwise noted: Seeds - selection of herbs, veggies, melons, & pretties - most of these will be heirloom varieties. If there's anything the 'winner' doesn't want, like say peppers due an allergy or something, just let me know! pencil & plant "stakes" for labeling Stationery - suitable for laser printers, typewriters, etc. How Does Your Garden Grow theme an old print of a Garden Tea Room - kitties and a touch of Victorian Era theme Assortment of Teas - and I do mean an assortment. :) I'm a tea-aholic! Hot tea that is, but this assortment will contain not just tea (real tea), but also bags/sachets for infusions that have no tea in them at all (herbs, etc.) Demerara sugar/organic pure cane sugar - Did I say I like tea? HOT tea? I got hooked on Demerara sugar when living in Scotland and now go back and forth between it and "white" sugar. The Demerara is divine especially when bothered by allergies or under-the-weather and during the colder months. *MAYBE* some Stevia Plus packets - an all-natural sweetener from the Stevia plant. These are a "maybe" because I can't remember if I gave them away already! I have to check! Mother-of-Thousands seedlings - Kalanchoe sp. - succulent plant(s). I adore the mother-plant to these seedlings - she looks absolutely alien! hehe Neat diversity to have amongst your houseplants and requires very little maintenance. some Messenger(R) - if you're not familiar with Messenger, I'll happily include info. I use Messenger on ALL of my plants! "Velma's Cactus" pups - heirloom cactus of a "barrel type". Pups are small, but the largest specimen I have had of this variety was about a foot and a half tall. This cactus has a "history" to it, that I will share either here (in a different post) or the recipient of the box. It blooms a beautiful magenta-fuchsia in colour, isn't terribly "vicious" where its prickles are concerned - a rather mild-mannered cactus compared to others. Unlike prickly-pear cactus, you won't have to worry about "invisible" sticklers in your skin causing pain. Obedient Plant - this one blooms light purple in colour. Very pretty perennial. Heirloom Iris tubers (rhizomes? roots - you get the idea!) These are an anybody's-guess on colours and form. They were grown by the now-deceased elderly couple that used to live on this property. They were what those of us in the south call "good people". Some of these irises might very well date back to their parents' or grandparents' gardening. I didn't have the heart to get rid of them, but they don't get the love here that they should so I'd like to share them with another iris-lover. Provided there is room, I'm probably also going to tuck in some body/bath stuff that I make. It's too hot for soap-making this time of year but I think I've got some wee bottles to at least give some samples of Gardenia bubble bath, etc. Some other succulent cuttings/leaves for rooting, such as Hummel's Sunset, an heirloom White-flowering Sedum, etc. I'll also include some Rooting Hormone and directions incase the recipient is unfamiliar with rooting succulents/cacti from cuttings. Themed stickers - either for scrapbooking or for fun to include with correspondence/parcels, etc. Garden related on one level or another. :) And whatever else I can fit into the box! LOL

Rebecca, I understand about plants that do their own thing despite what we think that ought to be doing. I think every gardener has at least one type of plant that behaves bizarrely in their garden. I do think that morning glories and moonflowers just behave that way sometimes. I had trouble getting them to sprout in the soil here the first few years, though I have no idea why. Admittedly, it was awful red clay and we were in drought, so maybe the soil, even though I was amending it every year, just hadn't reached that right point yet. Now, and you just have to laugh, they reseed everywhere with wild abandon and have become a royal PITA because I want a few dozen morning glory plants to grow along the south and east garden fence of the front garden and enough sprout to cover every square inch of the garden in morning glories. They sprout irregularly too, so I am yanking out MG volunteers literally every single week of the garden season. I've never grown them in the back garden for fear they also would run amok back there, but this year some Grandpa Ott's popped up back there, perhaps planted by the birds, so now I am sure I'll be yanking out millions of them back there too. It baffles me that they were so hard to get started in the early years and now you cannot stop volunteers from sprouting and growing to save your life. And, in that same way that tells you plants have their own minds, we have had Milky Way and/or Blue Star morning glories pop up in a crack in the concrete near the garage for over a decade. They get no irrigation, no food, no care, no compost, no mulch and no relief from the hot summer sun beating down on them and the concrete---and they come back every year and grow like mad. I guarantee you if I had built a bed for them back there and tried to grow them on purpose, there probably wouldn't be a single one there. These are plants that know their own mind. Nancy, Hydrangeas do not do well at my end of the state---we are just too hot and too dry for much of the summer most years, but your soil and weather up there is very different from mine. There's a lot of plants that grow really well in eastern OK that don't grow well in other parts of the state, and I think hydrangeas are one of them. It isn't really the 95 degree days or 100 degree days that get them down here, but in those years where we have a lot of days over 105 in combination with little to no rainfall, you can just see the life leaving the hydrangeas even if you're doing your best to keep them well-watered. I started out with a lot of hostas our first year here, and the deer taught me they were deer chow, so we have none now. Daylilies do great here as long as they are within the fenced garden where the deer cannot reach them. Crinum lilies are an unstoppable force of nature down here and they don't care how hot and dry it gets. They bloom in the worst of the heat. Will they eventually wilt and die back to the ground if we are hot and dry for months on end? They will, but since their root clumps are the approximate size of a Smart Car, they surely do not die, and I've never had deer eat them either. The crinums will just sit there dormant and wait for better weather so they can green up again and regrow. I have had crinums in the same spot for over a decade and need to dig them up and divide them but don't even know if it is possible at this point---it might require the use of a backhoe or some other form of earth-moving equipment. Speaking of hungry deer and the lengths they'll go to in order to eat....a friend of ours a couple of miles north of us had to release two deer from the hog trap (these hog traps are not big enough for the deer, but try telling the deer that) the other day. I guess the bait in the hog trap was too attractive to the hungry deer, they crawled in and couldn't get out. That happened a lot in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, but hasn't happened since. I guess the fact it is happening again shows how much the autumn/winter drought has hurt their winter food supply. Kim, lol at the cartoon. Dawn