Ahh, yes--the problems that callous youth seem to have! But, as Rome wasn't built in a day, and as things are learned best by "doing", i suppose you might make it in this world with all of yer appendages. i.e. Fingers, toes, feet, ears, etc. Why ears? If your mother was like mine-every time i goofed, she had a firm grip on one or the other of them! Of course, i lost my left foot in war-time, and the tip of my right first finger too, but i learned how to overcome those injuries, and how to work around them. Hopefully, you will learn about the dangers inherent to everything you might want to try. My advice is to have eyes in the back of yer head, and wear steel toed shoes, and watch wwhere ya put yer hands, feet, and fingers! BT/DT: Rusty Jones

I finished my harvest of broccoli and cabbage yesterday, so now those areas are freed up for a succession crop. Sweet potatoes are going into the raised bed where most of the broccoli and cabbage plants were because that bed has a hardware cloth bottom to exclude the pesky voles. I also harvested about 300 harlequin bugs, which never have been a problem in my garden before, and hundreds if not thousands of harlequin bug eggs. I suppose I have the drought to thank for them. I had gotten a few dozen the day before, but was astonished at how many more I found. I had one or two last year (if there were more last year, I never found them). I was so freaked out by the harlequin bugs (they'll simply destroy a tomato crop the way stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs do) that I yanked out every kale and almost every Swiss chard plant because they were covered with them too. I normally can keep Swiss chard happy all summer, but don't even want it in the garden if it is going to attract harlequin bugs. I noticed the heat has really taken a toll on the sugar snap peas and they have the beginning of powdery mildew at the bottom of the plants, so their days are numbered as well. I'm okay with that. I need their space for more melons. This morning I'll harvest the last of the sugar snap peas, yank out the plants, and then plant watermelons in that area. With all the rain that's in the forecast (yes, I am still patiently waiting for it to get here) for the next few days, I've been replacing cool-season crops with hot season crops that will carry us through the summer and which will, of course, give the grasshoppers lots of fresh new foliage to eat. It is an epic grasshopper year here already----the worst since 2003, and so far our 2013 rainfall is less than 2003's was for the first five months of the year. I think this week's rain will fix the rainfall problem, but the hoppers continue to hatch out daily and it is going to take a nuclear bomb or something to get them under control. I've been expecting them as their population cycles up and down over a period of years and has slowly been cycling up since 2011. I love the log planter, but anything that resembles a log here quickly becomes a home for snakes.

"Was anyone able to get rid of the gray banner with adblocker. I use firefox and the adblocker plus eliminated every ad except the gray banner at the bottom where AL used to live. " olychick, I had the same thing. Originally got rid of the ad itself but the gray box remained. I restarted Firefox and in the upper right corner of the gray box there was a little tab with "block" written in it. I clicked on that and that added that little ditty to the Adblock Plus list.

I did end up writing GW a note to complain yesterday, as the shadow ads along one side were still showing up despite my bumping my pop-up blocker up to high. I was also getting more of the giant ads and the ad blocker that GW supposedly put in for us to use was still not working. But this morning I got a nice email from GW's Tamara, who is the manager of GW forums. I'm going to attempt to cut and past it here for you all to read. Lynn Hi Lynn, There was an issue with an overnight update, but it should now be resolved. If you are still seeing the rail ads, you should be able to clear them by refreshing your page by hitting the F5 key. If you're still having problems, please let me know. With best regards, Tamara Amey GardenWeb Community Manager