Insects are known to have an extremely keen sense of smell, and use it to locate plants they want to eat. Many insects also specialize on individual plant species, or families, like a Monarch Butterfly to a milkweed. So all they have to do is sniff out one particular type of scent to target their food source. Your cucumbers will be located, resistance is futile.

Engineer and Ribbit, I feel for you both. I've been real lucky this year, knock wood, but I've been very vigilant in checking for them every single day. Also, I sprayed a prophylactic dose of Sevin early on. BUT, get this... I was talking to my neighbor on Sunday at the back fence. She keeps a few things stuck in the dirt in her back yard and never takes care of them so it all goes to grass and weeds. Anyway, when I looked down, I saw them. Squash bugs on her poor little cucumber vine. I told her what they were. "Oh don't worry about them. I don't have time to deal with them." "What?" said I. "I don't have these critters in my garden, and if you don't do anything, they'll come crawling into MY garden before long." She shrugged her shoulders!!! So I told her I was spraying her garden with my Sevin and she said okay. So I did! Damn!!!! I told her that next year, just give me the money she spends on her stuff and I'll just send her some of my harvest when the time comes. "Oh no," says she, "this is too much fun for me." Damn again! Just had to share that with you two because it sounds like you would understand me. So frustrating.

Thanks for the helpful information. I checked back to when I was given the $25K quote. It was shortly after October 13. I must have been so shocked I failed to write it down and reciting it from memory. I'm actually doing a 12+ acre development and each lot has corners to plot, and so on. This may have jumped the price some. The local bureaucarcy recently instituted a water run-off ordinance which can only be addressed with a topo. I don't know if this is common in other areas but it adds significant bucks to a developer's plan. I've read of GPS's having a temperature meter that coordiinates with its built-in barometer reading to offer help in giving the best altimeter reading possible. I think your idea of staying at a particular point for fifteen minutes or so to take several readings and to return to the same point a few times later on to take a few readings makes the most sense. At least one can average all the readings. It will take a while longer but if I could get the County to accept the readings it'll save some bucks. I've had a perimter survey done. A surveyor is to come in and do the lot corners and the road. What's left is topo data and that's what I hope to do myself. I've been reading about Garmins and Magellans. I appreciate the offer to call on you again and I may just do so once I get a unit. I've seen one at $349.00 that gives location within 3 meters but doesn't say anything about how well their temperature/barometer adjusted altimeter reading pans out. But, it may be what I can use. Thanks, again. Gene

I have that exact model, mine says 2555 LMT but I think it's the same. I got it last summer to replace my basic one because I had to drive my son from NY to Maryland alone and needed something to find gas stations and restaurants and stuff plus it was going to cost more than the device was worth to pay for the map updates. My friend got the similar model that lets you talk to it but I don't like it as the screen is smaller and I had a small screen so felt the bigger screen was more important to me compared to being able to talk to it and tell it where to go. I love this model but quit using it 4 months ago only because hubby bought me a new car for our anniversary and it came with built in navigation and that has a wonderful female voice that is so realistic and I love it. I think you can still get hal from garmin online if I remember right. If you haven't done so register the new one at mygarmin.com and make sure your garmin express on the computer is update so you are good to go for your map updates. You get like 3 a year I think it is for lifetime. I am doing updates on mine now since we keep it in the van because that does not have built in navigation but when done I will play and see if you can get hal. I know I downloaded some different voices to mine and I have bert and ernie starring at me for road trips on mine. On my old garmin my husband could not stand recalculating when ever he made a wrong turn and this garmin doesn't say a word so he liked it better for that. You can also use this new one to play audio books if you didn't know that and sometimes I use it for photo slide shows. My only complaint is why can't they give you a standard mini USB plug like most electronics these days? I have to make sure I don't misplace it as I only have one but I have many of the standard mini usb plugs. Mary