frankly.. the pics look like my garden.. after the first hard frost ... i do NOT grow most of the plants you ask about... but i do have a smokebush .. it is deciduous up here.. so browning leaves in november.. isnt all that surprising... frost is a weird creature.. able to hit a whole plant.. or just parts of the plants.. especially in an over-stuffed garden .... frost would also answer why otherwise evergreen plants for your zone might be affected .... there is a website that tracks temps by zip code ... but i dont have the link .... see link but i think you are on the right track ... its november... its not really time to be FIXING things with chemicals.. or jumping to conclusions about removal .. personally i would wait until spring and see what develops .... one other oddity.. is that in your otherwise.. presumably healthy garden.. a bunch of diverse plants.. get a weird malady.. overnight.. again.. bringing me back to frost .... the odds of such is astronomical ... but for wild temp swings .... good luck ken Here is a link that might be useful: it popped into my head

I'd like to see the other picture. But this looks to be the larvae of one of the Tortoise Beetles. Tortoise beetles love plants in the Brassicaceae family.....such as your radishes.

I don't know what happened - and I see those round things in the "cast" too - but not all the time. I'm going to dig some up and take it to the worm place one weekend and find out what it is. . . they aren't egg sacs! Drats!! And SOME grow legs and move around and others just stay round and shiny. . . well, I'm feeding this weekend too so I'll report back on those THINGS!! Hopefully they are GONE! Nell

I may be mistaken, but the Common Core is a set of standards; how they are met is the district's business. A minimum standard of education seems like a good thing. If it is challenging, we ought to ask why. The "new math" can be confusing because it teaches several options for generating answers, and it is not rote -- you have to understand the concept (math expressions is pretty good in elementary). And vouchers -- if charter and other for-profit schools pop up, they will market any way they can to get your voucher dollars. They will decline to educate those with challenging behaviors, special needs, IEPs, 501s, and those children will be left to the public schools, with fewer resources to meet their needs. If you have the money -- great -- buy whatever education you wish. But if you don't have the money, you will be limited to what the voucher folks offer -- and they would aim to make a profit doing so. The incentives to create great 'results' will be immense -- so teaching to the tests (so they can advertise their students do well); and dropping challenging students.... the incentives will be in the wrong place. Some charter schools do very well, but for accurate comparisons, the number of free/reduced lunches, special needs students, english as a second language, etc. needs to be similar for true comparison.