I've lived in town and in the country, and I definitely find more critters out here in the sticks, OKSandy! Jeff, I've accidentally brushed up against a saddleback caterpillar that was on a low rose branch, and that was quite a sting! Susan, I'll watch the hatchlings to see what they turn out to be and report back. Whenever somebody wants to plant some host plants, and they ask what they should plant, I always include wild black cherry, because nothing gets you more caterpillars than WBC, some you want and some you may not want! :) After I took the pictures, I saw a big wasp patrolling the tree. I should have stuck around to see what would happen if the wasp tried to eat the SRC - I wondered if this is one type of cat that could hurt the wasp! MissSherry

The trouble with tribbles! This has been identified on bugguide.net (use the google cached page, not the current search result for "mexican olive tree") as a larva of Physonota alutacea, a chrysomelid leaf beetle.

Wow you guys all sure have a lot of naughty but mostly cute critters just making themselves at home eating up your gardens! We had some deer when we first moved here but they mostly stay out of the yard now. They didn't like our dog. I remember when we lived in Wyoming and several large mule deer would make the rounds of all the houses in the neighborhood every evening like clockwork. They were not afraid of anyone. They would even climb up the stairs to one neighbor's two story deck to eat out of the planters they had up there lol. PattyW, speaking of botflies, we had a baby squirrel rescue one time that our cat (yes, cat) was nursing and raising alongside her kittens. The squirrel turned out to have a botfly in its tummy. Apparently its quite common for squirrels around here to get them. I had to pull that thing out and it was soooo gross lol. I could show you some really yucky pictures....LOL!! BenT, the frogs don't seem to eat the poisonous caterpillars or grasshoppers. I wish they would eat the grasshoppers they get huge here and eat up everything especially my hibiscus! Even the dumb chickens won't eat grasshoppers :/ ~Sjn

Thank you all for your kind words and, yes, it has been a really tough summer, but we'll get through it. I know that I cannot comprehend what Kyle's parents and other family members are going through. It is so hard still for me to believe it is true that he is dead---my denial cannot last forever though. His dad describes feeling 'heart-broken', and I am not sure how that sort of heartbreak ever heals, but I do know that we all find ways to carry on after losing loved ones. To me, it just seems so much harder when someone loses a child, as several of you have.....perhaps it is because we parents always expect to outlive our children even though we know this often is not the case. Rebecca, I am so relieved they were able to fix your AC. That is an enormous relief. Ours is 21 years old and we just cross our fingers each summer and hope it makes it through another year. So far, so good...but we all know that at any given time, our AC systems can go out, can be beyond repair and then we receive the dreaded news that it must be replaced. I am glad this was not that time for you. I am about to the point where I wonder if we should just spend the money to replace ours now instead of having to worry about it going out all summer long every summer. I'm married to a thrifty Yankee, though, so if I dared to suggest we go ahead and replace the system now before it completely dies, he'd be horrified because, you know, it might last another year or two or three. My brother did finally replace my mom's HVAC system a few years ago, when it was around 30 years old. I cannot imagine our AC compressor lasting another 9 years, but I guess you never know. Larry, There's nothing wrong with rambling! I hope you'll just take your time and pace yourself, knowing you'll get everything done sooner or later. I think learning to pace ourselves, not stay on our feet too long and work at a steady, not break-neck, pace is one of the harder things about getting older. I'm getting better and better about it as I go along. I do look back, rather longingly, at the years when I could work in the garden and yard all day every day from sunrise to sunset and go to bed tired, yet wake up raring to go each new morning. I no longer can work all day out in the heat or wake up raring to go again the next day either. More and more, I'm just happy that I wake up. Getting older is not for sissies! Nancy, I'm glad they had your phone. We have the Find My iphone app on our phones, and it is set up so Tim can use his phone to locate my phone or vice versa if we lose them. It comes in handy when someone (ahem, that would be me) loses their phone someplace stupid and cannot find it....like in the car or in the garden, buried under some tall plants or something. I'm sure it could find the phone if we lost it further from home, but neither one of us ever has, for which I'm grateful. I am really bad about misplacing my phone around the house, but that's just a simple matter of retracing one's steps until you find the last place you set it down. I think afternoon naps are wonderful! I think the people in Mexico have the best idea with the afternoon siestas. Why not sleep through the worst part of a hot summer/autumn day, and then wake up all revived and refreshed and full of energy for the rest of the day? I take an afternoon nap every now and then (especially if fire/medical calls woke us up during the night, because I never can fall back asleep after that) and I love those afternoon naps. I wish I could make a practice of taking one every day, but there's just not that sort of time. Jennifer, Your back area that you want to beautify sounds like it has a lot of potential. I am sure you will have a lot of fun beautifying it to suit you. I am glad Mason has a fella who is a keeper, and I'm sure she'll be thrilled when the ring comes....whether it is now or later. I'm happy for her. Sometimes it can be really hard for someone to meet the right person, and waiting for the right one to come along can be really frustrating. When okra is running out of time, heat or daylength, it will start dropping leaves and tend not to replace them. In our garden, that usually happens in October. You're further north, so it might happen earlier for you. Our asparagus has done that too, despite my best efforts to eradicate it so I can use that bed for something else. I'm starting to think I'll never be able to kill it just by relentlessly cutting it back all summer. I think the asparagus sort of perceives prolonged drought as dormancy, and then when rain comes, it breaks out all sorts of new spears. At least that is what ours does and it sounds like yours is behaving in a similar way. I have been reflecting on my 2019 garden, but you know, it really performed about as I expected with the weather we had. I adapted and changed my plans a lot early in the season, partly because of all the rainy weather and clouds, and partly because of all the issues with sick friends and relatives and with me just knowing in advance it was going to be a really tough summer, so I cannot complain about how it did. It performed better than expected in some ways--the bush beans, which I did plant pretty early to beat the heat, really over-performed, but it is hard to complain about putting up too many beans in the freezer because I know we'll eat them all eventually. Even the tomatoes produced very well, but again, only because I planted super early. I don't think they would have done as well if planted later. The only big surprise might be the roselle plants, which are much broader and bushier than usual, and I think the August rain gets credit for that. The real test will be how well they flower, and that doesn't even start until October so we won't know for a while yet. If they flower a lot, I'll make roselle jam, but even if they don't flower, they are a lovely background plant for other plants in the garden. Onions were a disappointment to some extent, but I had planted late after debating whether it was worth it to plant them at all in such wet conditions. We still got plenty of onions, and we still are using them and have enough to use for several more months, but some of them were a lot smaller than usual although some were the normal size. Usually I'd be making pretty concrete plans now for what veggies to grow next year, but since I am planting the front garden entirely as a cutting flower garden as a method of crop rotation, veggies aren't on my mind as much. Flowers sure are, though! Jen, The cosmos I planted late are peaking now, and I'm so glad to see them blooming so much. Between them, the zinnias, the Mexican sunflowers and the various celosias, there's lots of annuals in bloom for the butterflies, bees, hummingbirds, etc. Of course, many perennials are in bloom too, but it is the annuals that carry the burden of feeding the wild things at this time of the year. I think tomatoes will do great for you in mineral tubs. Mine in tubs still are producing from an April planting and, in fact, I have a couple of tomatoes to harvest today---I believe these are JD's Special C-Tex, and they have produced well early in the season, in the middle of the season, and now, late in the season. I think the fruit that are ripe now set during a rainy spell in the midst of the hot summer, and I'm surprised they have ripened as quickly as they have. The tomatoes in the compost pile are doing well and producing usable fruit too, so never discount the importance of tomato volunteers if they're in a place where you can leave them and let them do their thing. Canning with a water bath canner is so easy and you can make candied jalapenos in no time at all. You don't really need lessons for boiling water bath canning---just follow the instructions in the Ball Blue Book, or on the website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Now, for pressure canning, I do think it is best to take classes or learn from an experienced canner because of the higher danger level. You can use boiling water bath canning for jellies, jams, pickles (including pickled and candied peppers), some tomato products (like salsa), etc., and it really is easy. Don't be afraid to give it a try. I did it all backwards by the way, starting with pressure canning and then taking up boiling water bath canning, which seems totally backwards to me now, but I grew up in a home where some food was canned every year, so I knew the basics from helping my dad can long before I actually canned on my own as a young adult. Really, boiling water bath canning and pickling are so simple that once you do it, you'll be amazed at how easy it is. Dawn