Thanks for the thoughts all: Maybe it is an insect that prefers to go deep but can't because this is some very hard fruit. I've read somewhere where the stage of fruit development when the fruit is attacked can dissuade deeper intrusions into fruit than would otherwise occur. I don't know. I have yet to see any CM on peach and apple over the last 4 years in my location. This is not to say there is none. The apples get bagged and peaches get sockies, both are sprayed prior to that. Either I'm darned good (unlikely), the cultural methods and sprays have worked, there are no CM around here or I'm lucky so far (the most likely). Perhaps a combination of some of the above. Michael

Sorry for the delay. Here are the pictures: This is the mother plant - a nursery bought Fukushu Kumquat. Its been with me since 2013 and has grown from about 2 ft to more than 6 ft tall. Another picture of the same plant: A close up of the tallest branch what seems like more leaves or are these flower buds!??? between the 2 large leaves. The first cutting that rooted from the mother plant's pruning back in 2015: More cuttings that rooted this year: A Meyer lemon with 2 lemons and more on the way!:

Sara, I have struggled with the weeds ever since moving to Oklahoma in 1999, and have finally determined that mulching is MORE IMPORTANT in the veggie garden than anything else I do, you know? I see a lot of people in our area who till up the ground and plant a garden in the spring--say about April. The garden looks great as you are driving by. All that lovely brown or reddish-brown soil and all those tiny green shoots in rows. It looks great by mid-May. By early June you see weeds creeping in. By late June the gardens have as much weed and bermuda grass visable as row crops. By July the weeds and grass have won and the veggies are virtually abandoned by the homeowners. Then the same thing happens all over again next year. I can't understand people doing all the work each year to start a garden and then letting the weeds take over. So, every year in my garden I mulch and hand-pull weeds, and every year the weeds are less and less of a problem. Mulching is definitely the key. Now, if I could just "transplant" my weed control success from the veg garden to the rest of my landscape! Susan, I wish the swap were in late June or early July so I could bring bushels of tomatoes and corn and beans! Since the swap is in April, though, about all I can bring is a few letover tomato plants that I didn't have space to plant. If I had planned ahead and planted a lot of cool season crops, I might have had some to share. But I save almost all my space for warm-season stuff, and those plants aren't producing yet. Love-lies-bleeding is very slow to germinate. I always soak the tiny seed in water and sprout it in pots to get it started. I transplant it while it is tiny. I haven't planted any the last couple of years because it usually reseeds itself nowadays. The problem is that I grow 15 or 20 kinds of amaranths/celosias/cockscombs, so I never know for sure just what has reseeded until they get a foot or so tall. Until then they all look alike...well, all the red-flowered ones look pretty much alike...and all the green-flowered ones look pretty much alike, etc., etc. I do love the double blue Japanese morning glory with the picotee edge. I planted it two years ago and it was gorgeous. I haven't tried it since. Simply a space problem. And I do love Grandpa Ott's. It is so beautiful. I noticed that even Wal-Mart has seeds of it now, so guess it it one heirloom that has won full acceptance and has, thus, been successfully saved from extinction. I am waiting for that first ripe tomato. Every day I go and look at the 2 plants that have one fairly large tomato each. I stare at them and try to will those tomatoes to grow faster and ripen sooner. Those big fat green tomatoes stare back at me as if to say "we'll get ripe when we're good and ready and not before". I guess I don't have to tell you that the day they are finally ripe we will have BLTs for lunch AND dinner! Dawn

I thought I was bad trying to fit as many plants "inside" as I can. You are just as bad trying to fit as many as you can outside!! One of these days you are going to get some bizzare kind of cross-pollenization and become famous! What would you call a cross between a dragon fruit and a grape?