Awwwwwwwww! Poor little guy and your DH so brave to go after the bobcat! Bobcats don't get that big but I can imagine they can still do some damage if they feel threatened. I sure hope Felix manages to pull through. If not, I hope all that nest sitting pays off with a lot of happy little ducklings that take after him! I remember when I lived on the edge of a parkway, you didn't know their were coyotes around until the siren of a fire truck or police car sounded down the road. Then you'd hear dozens of them howling eerily in the woods only 30 feet from our building. People in the suburbs here have to watch out for coyotes grabbing their pets. I have heard of Great Pyrenees being excellent guard dogs for livestock. One woman on YouTube who raises miniature goats (which are so dang cute) has one to watch over them. I think one would be a great idea to watch over your ducks! And just to let you know how formidable they can appear, my mother told me one day about the polar bear someone was walking down the road. I thought she was joking around until I saw it! This one was all white about the size of a large St. Bernard. Yet I hear they are quite sweet and gentle pets.

coorscat, when you going to post picture of your Florida and North Carolina gardens? A few days ago I was down near my pond. The ducks were swimming. Then they started making noise and went under water fast. Then I saw a shadow in the pond from over head bird. These ducks belong to my neighbor and not able to fly yet. I thought it must be a hawk looking for a duck dinner. But latter that day I saw it was a blue heron. A few years ago while in the woods near the pond a blue heron almost hit me in the head with the tip of its wing.

Em, What a disappointment your fresh veggie meal turned out to be. Hopefully you'll soon be harvesting from your own garden. I hope your bowl of cereal was dirt-free and bug-free. With the weather turning sunnier and warmer this week, all the plants whose color is off or whose growth is sort of spindly and weak should improve. Part of the issue is that with lots of recent rainfall, the plants have had lots of cloudy days with less direct sun. Another problem is that excessively heavy rainfall, especially for days or weeks on end, clog up the plant roots with water, reducing their ability to absorb nutrients from the soil. Plants must have water to survive, but there is such a thing as too much water and that is what Mother Nature has been giving lots of us here lately....too much at once with no time for the soil to dry out in between rainy days. There is not a lot you can do to counteract that except be patient and wait for the rain to stop falling and the ground to dry up. With this week's heat, the ground should start drying out at a faster pace. I would have laughed at the leaf suggestion with the sycamore trees that have anthracnose too, but their point (which maybe they didn't explain) was that the disease persists on the foliage, so getting rid of the foliage as it falls helps get rid of the disease. Anyone who's ever seen mature sycamore trees would know they produce more leaves than mere mortals can rake up, pick up and dispose of. I assume there are some professional tree service firms that have the kind of sprayer that could reach to the top of your trees, but I don't know of any sprayer that a typical home gardener would have that would reach that far. Our neighbor across the road from us in Texas had a beautiful and very tall sycamore tree that had anthracnose all the time. My earlier cilantro plantings from February, March and April are either blooming or setting seed now. My later ones from May are stalled in their growth and also a light green. I think it is the rain. We have had too much rain lately after not having enough of it through early May. The heat is starting to arrive and cilantro isn't crazy about that either. My later plantings are in morning sun and afternoon shade which usually helps them tolerate the summer heat better. The white spots on the verbena might be something as simple as sunburn or environmental stress. Many types of tender plant foliage can suffer from wind burn and sun burn in spring and early summer. It looks about the same as the damage you see on seedlings that are raised indoors and then suddenly moved outdoors into full sun and full wind without being gradually hardened off. Sometimes, when a plant has been subjected to a prolonged period of persistently cloudy, rainy weather, it sort of loses its ability to tolerate full sun and wind. It also could be from water on the foliage as Susan noted, but I rarely observe that here,partly because I mostly water with drip irrigation that puts the water in the soil, not up on the foliage. I do sometimes see sun damage on leaves of annuals and herbaceous perennials if we have a solid week of cloudy weather and then suddenly have full sun again all day every day. It just takes them a while to adjust. Air pollution damage also can cause spotting on verbena foliage, specfically damage from sulphur dioxide. With verbena, if it is little tiny speckled spots, it also could be spider mite damage. I've already seen spider mite damage on some verbena bonariensis in my big garden. We are surrounded by pasture land and thus we have tons of spider mites blow into the garden in May of every year. When I lived in a regular, non-rural neighborhood in Fort Worth, I never saw spider mites until July or August. So, whatever you're seeing on the verbena shouldn't spread, unless it is spider mites. If you think it could be spider mites, hold a sheet of white paper underneath the foliage and thump the leaves. If little tiny dots about the size of the dot over the letter "i" falls off the leaves and starts crawling around on the white paper, then your plants likely have spider mites. Spraying the underside of the foliage with a good strong stream of water every 3 days for 3 or 4 times usually will drive them away. Or, you can spray the undersides of the plants with insecticidal soap or neem oil, but be careful using those once them temperatures are in the 90s. Some plant foliage burns easily when air temps are high. I cannot help you with the ducks, but I do know that some breeds of ducks are better garden weeders than others. George can tell you how his ducks behave. I let our free-range chickens into the garden to patrol for bugs at some points in the calendar year, but not when there are low hanging tomatoes that are within their reach. Dawn

That stuffed tenderloin looks wonderful Ann! And so does your chicken, Dixie. I'll have one each of Terri's funnel cakes and Marigene's muffins with my coffee please. Thanks Lou for your sauce recipe! I'll let you know how we like it if I can find those ingredients. Yes Ann, I haven't made chicken wings before because they have just started appearing in one of our supermarkets. They're still more or less unknown here. For years chickens were sold only whole or in halves and not in trays of individual parts. It's only recently that we could even find trays of thighs or drumsticks. But this is the first time I've seen wings for sale. Not much cooking going on here as we've finished up some leftovers and had bacon & eggs with fried tomatoes another day. Saturday we were out at the Austrian restaurant and had: Wolf....chose Suelze, a cold sliced jellied pork. I felt like some salad so took chicken breasts on salad with a side of chips. Afterward we made a drive with the car for a recycle drop and then to a supermarket for some small shopping. We had coffee at home. It's been raining a bit again at night.....we sure need it, and the garden is looking happy, as are the birds and the bees. Included some macros from the garden taken over the past couple of days: Rain on rosebud, jade plant bud, bee on osteospermum and brunsfelsia bud. Have a good weekend! SharonCb