Oh Robin, you had me at Pensacola. Pensacola Beach is one of my favorite places I've ever been to. We used to go there regularly when I lived in New Orleans. It only took about four hours though. We stayed at the last motel toward the state park. At night we'd go down through the park to the fishing pier and fish and watch the guys shark fish. One of my and Christy's fondest memories is catching fish there with a group of our women friends. None of us had seen this particular fish so this one girl went over to neighbor fishing couple at the pier and asked what the fish was. She came back and told us it was called a Ralpher. Now I've fished quite a bit and admittedly I hadn't fished much in the south at that point but I, nor any of them had heard of ralphers..okkk.. Later on I went over and asked about these ralphers and the guy looked at me really funny and said... they're croakers..lmao. Omg.. the totally common croakers. Poor gal, I'm sure she hasn't lived that one down yet. Croakers we all had heard of, ralphers, not so much. Funny part was they were croaking as we pulled them in. It did sort of sound like they were saying... Ralph...Ralph.. lol.. Go for it Robin. The Gulf is calling you.

Things are busy here and things are changing. The land I am growing on is being sold, so soon I'll be split between two locations. The new location is bigger, 4.5 acres, so I'm happy. I don't have a big tractor so I'm going to hire someone to plow and disc it the first time. I am sticking with my 50-share CSA plan, but now I am going to bump up the Fall garden to 1.5 acres and plant another half acre for a Winter market garden(hopefully I will have great markets like you Jay). I have a good location so I'm thinking of setting up a market at my garden instead of selling somewhere. What do you think? At the current location, I'm pretty much just harvesting, putting shares together, and trying to keep the insects under control. I did one last weeding and put a heavy layer of mulch on the beds last week in preparation for Summer. I planted 200 sweet potato plants a couple days before I found out about the plans to sell the land. Hopefully development won't begin until late Fall. The cool season stuff is about finished, and all of the warm-season crops are being harvested except, Okra, watermelons, cantaloupes, and cowpeas. I started my peppers really early this year and it paid off. I'm picking every type of pepper except for the habaneros and Red Marconis. I've already ordered some Winter squashes, melons, cucumbers, and summers squashes for the Fall and have seeded peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes. What type of Fall tomatoes have been your best? I started a lot of cherries because they are fast and set fruit good in the heat. I also started a lot of Early Wonder, Kimberly, and Fla 91 as well as a few early and mid-season heirlooms. I plan on leaving the cherries uncovered. With the rest I am going to use 20 ft pvc to make 10 ft-wide high tunnels covered with greenhouse plastic once lows dip into the 50's. Pete

Morning all! Fran, I put in a bit more postage than what it was for me to mail my package to you. I don't think that I'll get back what I sent because we have a lot of veggie growers here, BUT if by chanace you dont have enough postage I'd be happy to send more if you need it to get my package back to me. I'm so glad that I bought the veggie seeds, I could almost hear how excited people were when I offered them up for grabs! Thank you to anyone who sent flowers in for me, I assure you that every single seed will find a good home. Lisa

And the word from Dirtgirl is..... HOLY COW WHAT IS THAT? The most fascinating thing I've seen in a long time, Cathy! OK, a few questions, and then a few blind guesses on my part. Is that a cherry tree it's on? Does it look like spider silk or more like paper, like a hornet's nest, or are there leaves stuck around on the outside? Were there any holes at all, even small ones? By any chance did you move it around, hear anything rattling inside? What did it taste like? kidding. I'm just excited with this one. Gee this is something. Bird's nest? It kinda resembles an early hornet's nest material wise, and they don't always make them in the classic shape, either. It also brings to mind the cocoons I have found of the giant silkworms, except that I can't come up with any that really look like what you have there.the size of 7-8 inches is another clue. I have seen Hickory Horned Devil caterpillars that were easily 5 inches long but I don't know from personal experience what their cocoons look like , much less when to expect to find them pupating. Some of the bigger caterpillars do their thing while hangingfrom a branch, some do it underground. Some are a sturdy sac of yellowish white silk, and some are wrapped in leaves....there's all kinds. By all means, you should DEFINITELY post this on both the butterfly forum and the Name that Insect forum, for good measure. Now I have some homework to do!! I'm flattered that you'd think I know, but I'm totally stumped for the time being! DO you have any more pictures? I KNOW what a good photographer we are dealing with here so hopefully you can get us a few more goodies to look at.