Hi - the 'eggs' & ants are aphids plus ants could be feeding on the aphids' excrement (a.k.a. honeydew) - or on the plant's nectar. Okra has nectaries, I've learned, which are sort of pores on the plants that produce nectar. You can wash aphids & ants off w/ a hose. The aphids can do harm, since their feeding can damage/distort leaves & tissues, but ants by themselves won't harm okra by feeding on the nectar, in fact they may help as pollinators. I do not see ants in your photo, so they may be after the nectar & not the aphids' honeydew. The holes in the okra leaves are definitely done by something else, but they look healed over to me, meaning the damage is old & pests are likely long gone. It could've been perpetrated by caterpillars, grasshoppers or slugs/snails, I think. The 'rule of thumb', BTW, is that plants can lose up to 1/3 of their foliage & still be OK. It is hard to determine if that is upper or lower foliage on the tomatoes. I don't worry too much about damage on lower leaves, since they tend to get scraggly w/ age, but if it's on new growth @ the top, I think that may be cause for concern. I remove dead leaves regularly from my tomato plants.

I agree Nil, a few months ago I was at the Theodore Payne Society off La Tuna Canyon in Sun Valley. They were finishing up a major renovation/addition to their buildings and grounds. When I was there they were installing drip lines for the new gardens which, since it's the TPS, are all CA natives. They used 1/2 inch inline drip tube and were laying it out in parallel lines about a foot apart. This grid covered the whole planting area. Once it was installed they planted the natives inside the grid. I don't know how often they water, maybe the next time I'm there I'll ask them. When I was there they did tell me that you need to water the ground and not water individual plants with drip. It was a revelation. I just did the same thing with my new landscape. The inline drip tube is robust and easy to work with. My first drip system, installed about 20 years ago, was a mess of spaghetti tubes going to each individual plant. It never worked well and for 20 years I swore off drip irrigation until I saw the right way to do it.

I have been using Mills Magic and various Tones, usually right before a big rain. It's a time-consuming process since I have to pull back the mulch, scratch in the fertilizer thoroly and then replace the mulch. To keep the dogs off I lay empty flats (the plastic trays that six-packs of annuals come in). I still find soil disturbed here and there and guilty looking dogs with mustaches of dirt on their golden faces! Am going to back off on the process this year by relying on compost, liquid feed and alfalfa tea instead. Most of my garden is established shrubs and OGR's and I want to see how they do on this regimen. After all I'm not growing for exhibition!

Generally, when a broadleaved evergreen shrub - like a ceanothus - loses all or 95% of its foliage, it is dead or dying. Signs of green on stems or under the bark are not always good indicators of viability as it can take some time for a dead or dying shrub or tree to lose all the internal moisture that produces the green tint, often a full growing season. Once established, west coast native ceanothus do not need and actively dislike any summer irrigation. In fact, one of the reasons they have a reputation for being short lived in a garden setting is because they tend to receive more irrigation than is required. A number of west coast native species have a similar dislike for a cultivated garden setting. Hardy, yes, but more than a little picky about growing conditions.