I've picked a few more zukes since Friday's first harvest, got a few more on the vines, 1 got pretty big yesterday so I'm leaving it until tomorrow since DS is coming home late tonight and he likes it grilled. Picklebush cukes seem to be growing pointed on the ends - the 1 I left to fill out got kind of big, I think I'm going to slice these all up and make bread and butter pickles for my dad, I don't have any left from last year. It has been a very disappointing year, I've been to market twice since it started a month ago and haven't had much to bring except for jams and jellies (and tomato plants, strawberries 1 week, haven't gone with blueberries since we had a heat wave right after I picked a lot and market is in a parking lot, forecast was 99 degrees that day so I just froze them). Veggies are really slow, though the oregano that overwintered is in flower, the basil (seeded this year) is finally getting big enough to cut (I should have planted more), the dill looks great, and the volunteer cilantro has bolted and is starting to form seeds (yeah!!). I haven't checked the beans or tomatoes out back since I watered them Sunday - beans were flowering but no beans yet, some fruit set on tomatoes but even the cherries aren't full-sized yet, they're going to take a while to ripen. The blackberries were starting to really turn color, I might have wild blackberries before an veggies (other than these squash and cukes)!

For some of them, especially thyme, if you neglect it the lower stems can lose all their leaves; so if you were to cut it back hard, there'd be no leaves left. If that happens, give it a "haircut," which will stimulate new leafy branches to form below. After a few weeks, you can then give it a more severe pruning to restore it to bushiness.

I vote for a longer summer season in the Seattle Area as well ;)

Susan, The nice thing is that she can be whatever she wants to be as long as she's willing to work for it. When my now 24-year-old niece was 3-years-old, Tim asked her "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and she replied "Barbie!" Well, she didn't grow up to be a Barbie doll after all, but she is a mom herself now and that was her real dream all along. Chipotle heat varies depending on which kind of jalapenos you use to make them. Chipotles are just roasted jalapenos and you can roast them in the oven or on the grill. I freeze them but they also can be canned in adobo sauce. It sounds like you had an amazingly successful butterfly year. After having very low butterfly numbers in 2008, everything seemed to return to normal this year, and I still have tons of butterflies here in the first week of November. There are all kinds, but especially the sulphurs. In August and September, it was mostly swallowtails. If I pay attention to what is going on around me, I'll see butterflies here almost every month of the year....although not too many in January and early February. I am not sure about the grasshopppers for 2010. We saw their population make a strong resurgence all over Oklahoma this year but we won't know for 2-4 more months if their numbers will climb higher and peak in 2010 (likely) or if 2009 was a peak. A very cold and very wet winter works against them, so let's hope for 'cold', since the El Nino pattern more or less guarantees 'wet'. For us here in southern OK, there are years we start seeing grasshoppers hatching out at the very end of January or in earliest February. In a year when that happens, I make a mental note to buy one of the natural baits with nosema locuste (Grasshopper Attack or Semaspore or Nolo Bait) in it and scatter some once the hoppers are 1/4 to 1/2" long. It kills them quickly when they are in the younger instars. I only put out a little if I am seeing early hatchings, but I put out more every couple of weeks through about early May. If you can catch them early, they are easy to deal with. If I don't see a lot of grasshoppers hatching out until March or early April, that's a good sign and likely we'll have lower populations. So, by mid-Spring, we'll know for sure. And, of course, it goes without saying that there's not much we can do about the other grasshoppers that migrate into our yards during the summer since they grew up elsewhere, but I do think it helps if you've been able to keep the native population very low before the migrating ones arrive. Because grasshoppers were bad, blister beetles were bad too, although they were bad late. The blister beetles eat a lot of things, and I believe grasshopper eggs are one of their food sources. So, if we are seeing lots of hoppers, we'll have to brace ourselves for lots of blister beetles. We had prolonged heat in part of July and part of August which did make those water bills pretty high, but the rest of the year the water bill was just a dream. The important thing was that the rain came along every so often and kept the garden in heavy production a lot longer than normal. I can justify the high water bill if I'm harvesting oodles of produce, which I was. For once, I didn't have to just give up on watering and walk away and let the drought take the garden from me, so it was very nice. The amazing thing about our rain, Susan.....here in Love County we had 23" in 2008 and, so far, about 48" in 2009. I guess you can see where our average annual rainfall (36-38") comes from. I have to say that I prefer the 48" years to the 23" years. Grandkids are fun. We just should have had them first! Dawn