Outstanding photo images, Molanic! Yes, we have an influx this year of Red Admirals, Variegated Fritillaries, Mourning Cloaks, and Clouded Sulphurs in my area. The VFs decimated the Passiflora incarnata early on, but they grew back in time for the Gulf Fritillaries to arrive. I have tons of Clouded Sulphurs, but didn't find any eggs or caterpillars. What did yours feed on? I have quite a bit of White Clover, and they were very late leaving this year. I saw them still mating in mid-December. I guess the eggs overwinter on the clover, or maybe they hatch and overwinter as tiny larvae. I don't know much about this butterfly since it is not commonly observed or hand-raised. I'm fascinated that you raised them! Love, love, love that Haploa moths. I am in love with moths and have raised 13 different species of sphinx. One plant I always recommend to moth lovers, especially sphinx moth lovers, is Virginia Creeper. I have found Eumorpha achemon, Eumorpha pandorus, Virginia Creeper sphinx (Darapsa Myron), and Nessus sphinx (Amphion floridensis) all feeding on Virginia Creeper. In addition, the pretty little Eight-Spotted Forester moth uses it as a larval host. I haven't tried to raise the Forester because of its unique pupation requirements. The pupate in holes in old wood. I haven't quite figured out how I would provide that. Do you know what the Haploa uses for larval food? DD, you don't need to do anything fancy to feed the fruit-feeding butterflies, other than put out rotten or very ripe fruit. I have even had them to come to not-so-ripe fruit like watermelon. My butterflies are fed bananas. I buy the bags of overripe bananas, reduced in price by the grocer, and put them out in a suet feeder. I open up the skin and expose the interior fruit a bit, put in the feeder, and hang it up. I have had Mourning Cloaks, Hackberry and Tawny Emperors, Red Admirals, Red Spotted Purple (rare in my area), an occasional American Lady, and in early morning, at dawn, and evening, I have had tons of Nessus sphinx feeding on them, too. The Nessus is a day-flying moth, and they are just a little larger than the Snowberry Clearwing. They are very cute! Susan

Well, my watermelon plant has started growing...but my tomatoes aren't producing much yet. I have two large plants and only one has maybe 6 tomatoes on it. The other has been flowering, but not much (same with tomatillo). I have plenty of flowers nearby and plenty of bees visiting the area. Usually by this time of year the things are weighted down with tomatoes! My green beans are slow going as well. Haven't done anything different from years past....could it really still be from the wacky weather we had earlier in the season? Anyone else's veggies still coming along very slowly? Kristy :)

Gamebird, Watermelons give subtle ripeness clues, although some varieties give better clues than others. The tendral that's closest on the vine to the watermelon turns brown and dries when the melon is ripe. The color on the underside of the melon that touches the ground turns a dull, creamy yellow color and, with some melons, it gets a slightly rough texture. Also, once you've grown a particular variety and know how large it tends to get in your soil and your conditions, then the size of the melon is also a clue because a melon is not likely to be ripe if it weights 15 lbs. and the standard melon for that plant is 25-30 lbs. Finally, when you thump a ripe melon, it makes more of a hollow, dull sound whereas an unripe melon makes a sharper, ringing sound. I don't pick a watermelon until it meets all 4 criteria--the size has to be right for that variety, the underside a creamy-yellow and often roughly textured, the tendral dried and the thumping sound. If a melon only meets 1 or 2 of the criteria, it is ripening but not fully ripe. However, if it meets all 4 criteria, it never fails to be ripe. With muskmelons (generally called cantaloupes in this country although they are not true cantaloupes), you have to check daily because they can go from "not quite ripe" to "ripe" overnight. With many of them, the aroma is a dead giveaway. Also, the abscission layer at the stem will crack and you can gently tug at the melon. Once the abscission layer is about 75% separated from the vine, the melon is ripe and separates from the vine with only the gentlest tug. If you use a more forecible tug to yank a melon off the vine when the abscission layer is only about 50% cracked, the melon will not be as good as if you left it on the vine until it is at full slip (75% to almost 100% cracked). Other melons like true cantaloupes and inodorus (like canary, casaba and crenshaw melons) are harder to judge. With some of them, there is a color change that is very obvious although it is hard to know what to look for the first time you grow a particular melon. Collective Farm Woman is a very dark green as it grows, for example, but turns a deep golden yellow as it ripens. Different melons may exhibit more subtle changes as the primary color takes on a hue that changes from a gray or greenish color to one that is more brown or yellow. Melons that are in the reticulatas family and have a more netted appearance will get increasing amounts of netting as they ripen. The more coarse the netting and the more widespread it is on the melon, the better the flavor. Most netted melons get softer as they get riper too. Among the hardest to judge in terms of ripeness are the melons of the inodorus type like crenshaw, canary and casaba melons. They also tend to have a very long DTM. These melons don't have any netting to judge them by, they lack smell until after they've been cut open, they don't get softer, etc. With them, you'll have to go more by the DTM and very subtle clues like the most subtle of color changes and the appearance of tiny cracks in the rind. Hope this info helps. Dawn

It is hard to find a good place to garden at most homes, I think. I only have one choice to garden in the ground and that is my fenced backyard. My neighbors have told me that at some point it was all garden, but I am having a hard time getting it ready to garden again. Someone planted virginia creeper along the north fence line and that stuff is awful. It sends out runners both under the ground and on the ground surface for 5 or 6 feet. The vine is pretty, but it is a nuisance plant as far as I am concerned. On the south fence I had climbing sweet pea vines, and on the west I had something that was kind of briar looking, but no thorns, and a spot that always had poke, no matter what I did. It has all been killed but I am still working with root problems. One year my neighbor saw me in the back yard and came over to visit. He knew I had been trying to clean up the fence without cutting down the Virginia Creeper. He sat there awhile and then he picked up my nippers and headed for our fence. He cut for just a minute and chopped some large stuff. He came back and sat down and we watched one of the vines just "croak", right then and there. He was so worried about it, and I was thrilled. That plant had covered half of the fence and it was the half nearest the planted area. Then he got married and his wife didn't like it any better than I did, so we have gradually taken it off the fence. Of course, the roots hadn't all died so every year I was pulling up roots. Although I covered the entire area with RoundUp last spring, I am still fighting old roots and they get hung up in the tiller. Once when Bill (gonefish'n) was alive he saw a picture of my garden. He told me my garden looked great but that he would be worried about having a tree so close to the garden. What he couldn't see in the picture was that I had three trees just around my fence line and two of them weren't mine. That winter the ice storm broke so many limbs on the tree west of me that the neighbor had it taken down. Aww, too bad. A couple of years later, my neighbor that cut the vine, had a tree split during an ice storm, and the half that fell landed in my garden and was so huge that it almost touched the three fences and the house, so now that one doesn't shade my garden. Aww, too bad. The one left is a smaller tree and is mine. Dealing with the roots is kind of a mess, but I sure like the shade when I am working and need a place to rest. Now that I am old, I seem to use that more often. LOL I have several areas of my garden that are shaded by two of the neighbors storage buildings in the late afternoon, but the plants have had enough sunshine by that time anyway and it offers them a little protection from the intense heat in mid-summer. I can work many hours of the day in my garden by just starting early in the spots that get no shade and working my way to the shade as the day progresses and the heat intensifies. We built a small chicken house that has a pen on the bottom, and a house above and they can go up a ramp to get inside where the roost is. It is narrow and sits with it's back to the neighbors shed. I bought the lumber today to extend the run 16 feet down the fence line from the coop. It will only be 3 feet wide but will provide a barrier from the grass that creeps in from next door. It will also cover the area that has the poke patch that never ends. Since I have had the chickens, they trim back the few plants that have come up since I sprayed. This 3 x 16 part is only going to be a couple of feet high. It will only be for daytime use, and at night they will be back in the coop. Some love the roost upstairs, but the Sultans like the ground, or the ramp. It has wire on the floor but it is vinyl coated with about 2x4 openings. You can't see the wire, but it is down there to keep out other critters. We still have a few things to do to the chicken coop, but they are living in it anyway. They get out to run for an hour or so everyday in the garden, so it has worked out OK for them but they are growing fast. We still have to put the metal on the roof and build the nest boxes into the end. The metal probably will get put on when my neighbor is home since he has a plasma cutter that makes things a lot easier. Besides that, I can't do the metal by myself. We have it, but just haven't gotten it on. So far the rains have been light so they are only getting a few drips down through the roof. For the run, I am building 8 foot sections with lumber on all sides and wire in the center. Maybe I can finally keep the grass from creeping in by letting the chickens keep it cleared. Most years that I have had a garden here, I have planted about half of the backyard because I still had lawn on part of it and then because of all of the roots it was hard to go up to the fence with anything. This year I started to reclaim it all. Most of the grass is gone but I still have other things coming up, so it's not done yet but I think it is to the point I can plant it and just mulch heavily and weed it for awhile. We are talking about changing our fence so that it goes all the way across our back property line and comes out far enough to enclose our sheds and things into the backyard. Some of it has buildings on it but I could probably plant some of it also. It would include the area where we had the cedar trees taken out this year and where I plan to have a greenhouse someday. Someday is far away, because this is the year of the kitchen. Diane has "the year of the corn", "year of the bean", at our house we have the "year of the renovation" of this or that. I hope we aren't too old to enjoy it by the time we finish. LOL Anyway, the moral of this story is, that eventhough the land may be flat, you still can't plant in all of it. I am blessed that the back yard soil has been improved and has almost no rocks, but that is not the case in parts of the yard. I have one flower bed that I wonder how anything grows in. I guess the roots just work there way around the rocks. I also have a septic system and a large leeching field. I plant in containers also, but my big old nursery tree pots are probably seeing their last year this year. I have lots of smaller ones, but the big ones are about gone. My DH asked down at solid waste if they ever got feed tubs. They told him they did, but they all fought over them and took them home. LOL I don't have fruit trees and really don't have room for any. I bought two small blueberry plants in the spring and grew them in containers until a few weeks ago. My DH dug the holes for me and we just kind of dropped them in the ground with all the soil and peat that was in the pot. Just after we planted them, we had a huge rain, so they seem to have settled in nicely. What does all of this have to do with planting corn, and stealing Diane's thread. Only this -- I think I finally have cleared enough area that I can plant a small patch of corn. HeeHee Diane, like you, I am going to be planting corn for grinding instead of sweet corn. I bought a pack of yellow Hickory King dent corn, and if I like it I am going to try the white one the following year. Either that, or switch to the one that George grows.