Hi again, Edna and Susan, from far away it looked like a huge Bumblebee which we have so many up here..lol When I approached it closer I knew there was no Bumblebee..and like I said, it was busy and stayed here for quite a while that I had the chance running inside and getting my camera.. It is crazy what I see here when the sun comes out..We had about 2 hours of sun yesterday and I saw a bunch of Bumblebees,2 Skippers,1 Black SWT and a few Whites..The eggs from 2 weeks ago did not make it, guess even though I had the plants covered it was just too cold for them..:( Cannot wait til we have nicer weather again and explore more of my new CRITTERS up here.. This Coldfront and all the rain is a bummer.. :( Oh and last week we had our first Tornado-Warning, scary thing for someone who just escaped all the Hurricanes in Florida.. Praying for SPRINGTIME-WEATHER..... Susanne(SUE)

Larry, I love the photo. Our deer aren't as thin as yours, but they were that thin, or even worse, last year. Yesterday when Tim came home from getting a haircut he came in with a bag of deer corn and we put some out for the deer this morning. I put the deer corn right by the back compost pile near the deer trail and the deer were there eating it 10 minutes later. It was the same herd that I described in the first post on this thread. They didn't come until about 7:45 a.m. Something is scaring the deer and rabbits because they are becoming very scarce in the evenings, and don't come out in the mornings until well after sunrise. This is a change in their pattern that has occurred within the last week. Yellow Cat, who was a feral cat for a decade before he settled into our place, adopted us and retired from being wild and self-sufficient won't even leave my side right now, and would stay inside the house 24/7 now if I'd let him. When he starts hiding out inside like that, or sticking to me like glue outdoors, that's another sign the predators are getting too close to the house. I haven't seen any or heard any, but we had a coyote hanging around a couple of months ago. Likely it is a coyote that's scaring them. Susan, I've never seen native passionvine on our land nor have I ever seen it anywhere in Love County. It might grow down in the wild river bottom areas, but we've been down there on fires and on drowning searches/recoveries and I've never seen it there either. Remember that we're more of a grassland than woodland type ecoregion, although there are some stretches of woods along the river and along creekbanks. I wish we had native passionvine here. We do always have gulf frits, though, so there's got to be passionvine someplace. My guess would be it is more in the eastern part of our county because the soils there are better and there's more woodlands along the river. I've seen giant, black and spicebush swallowtails this summer, but not very many of any of them. Usually they are as thick as flies, so I really miss having the usual hordes of butterflies around. Carol, That sounds like a great way to shade your pepper plants. As hot and dry as y'all are there, I know they must really appreciate that shade. My peppers wilted a couple of days in June when rain hadn't fallen and we were over 100 degrees but haven't wilted since then. They do get shade from the pecan tree beginning between 2 and 3 p.m. and that seems to be helping keep them happier this year than they were last year. Dawn

Neat quarters up there!!! I'm really glad to see it came out ok after the wild ride this early spring. I remember your plight. I too like the Hawk moth, but the worms get a free ride out of the garden to chance it elsewhere....... I found a parasited one this am. I was surprised as I noticed no damage. I believe that the brown one is a tobacco and the green is a tomato hornworm. tobacco's have the chevron stripes, or is it the opposite? Tom

You can always embrace the change and look at the move as an opportunity to create a brand new garden!! I was very reluctant to leave my old garden of nearly 30 years. So many wonderful plants and so many memories! And that reluctance to leave it very likely made me delay the move much longer than I should have :-) Since that time I have created two new gardens for myself in very different locations and with very different conditions. And plants!! Neither have been as complicated or as large (or mature) as my previous garden but both better fit my current lifestyle and both were/are equally appealing to me. My only regret is that my current garden is not as large as I would like (really tiny!!) so I have resorted more to containers than inground plantings. And the deer are much too frequent and hungry visitors!! But I don't really miss any of the plants from my old garden - except for the trees I planted - would have liked to see those mature. And I have added some of the plants that I previously grew, simply because I like them so much or they suit the situation well. But I have also added a lot of new-to-me plants as well. And that is part of the fun.....creating something new and quite different!!