Hi all, I'm not mechanically inclined, so if you could give me some thoughts on what has happened I would appreciate it much. I have a Craftsman Pro Lawn Tractor, it has the B&S 24 hp ELS V-Twin with a 24" cut, that I just use here at home,(2 Acres) I've had it about 2 maybe 2.5 years and it is out of warranty. I was riding it from the garage to the yard (blades were not engaged yet) when a very loud pop happened and it died. After that, when I tried to restart it, the motor just turns but it will not start as if something in the engine broke..... I DO think this is MY fault (and I'm embarrassed to say this), but I think I was low on oil - could you give me a suggestion as to what may have broke, due to my ignorance, so I can at least have some idea of what to tell someone it may need when I try to find someone to give me an estimate to repair it? BTW, I live in a rural area and do not have any authorized B&S centers within approx. 80 miles of me (Sears store is about 58 mile away too). One last thing, I have always put new oil and filter, and air filter on it each year, and last year I put a new spark plug on it in addition to the other maintenance - I have tried to keep it running well, but this year I just made a MAJOR/stupid mistake that is gonna cost me......... Thanks for any suggestions guys (and ladies) :-)

Northspruce: Thanks for the info about the orange daylily. This one doesn't seem to spread to much, I wish it would spread a little more. Aramis is a nice daylily. I like the form. It has very sturdy scapes and HBC. Here's a picture of the whole plant. Thought you might like to see what that looks like.

Jeri, your description reminded me of the bad storm we had 3 Mays ago that caused all the construction in my neighborhood. I slept through the whole thing, but there was a bad storm and we received 10 inches of rain in 3 hours. It became worse when the water burst through a fence in a yard across the street from me and the home owner had piled yard waste in front of it. All that water and debris rushed downward towards a drain and clogged it. Then the water built up, unfortunately flooding the basement of the two homes near the drain (which had been similarly flooded 10 years ago). At some point I had 2 feet of standing water in my yard, I could tell by the debris line. But luckily my house is higher in the front and slopes downward away from my basement so I did not get any water in there. Now with the new drainage, we get a river running through our yard, but it dissipates after a bit. Of course if we had an El Nino like event, who knows what would happen. After that first rain (after the construction) all that was left in my yard was sand silt. It was like I had beach front property. I also remember a bad rainstorm when my neighbors drain hole cover popped open from the force of the storm water and the statue on top went flying. Almost funny, but not really.

Mary, Last week my tomato plants looked fairly good, all things considered, and I was pleased that the Daconil had more or less kept the foliar diseases from getting worse. Then, this week after the rain had gone away and the heat set in, some plants went downhill really fast. Now I have plants heavily loaded with fruit (which is, finally, breaking color more quickly in the heat and sunshine) but with foliage that looks like it is on its last legs. And, spider mites popped up by the billions. I'm already at the point where I'm just biding my time and harvesting fruit and counting the days until I can start yanking out the most awful looking plants. I spent yesterday stripping sick foliage off of the tomato plants. What was most interesting was that in some cases, the diseases seem to run by variety. For example, both Vorlon and True Black Brandywine only had grey mold and nothing else. Nebraska Wedding tended to have powdery mildew and alternaria. Many of the hybrids types have either Early Blight or Alternaria. A few heirloom types have gray leaf spot. I guess I should be happy that every variety doesn't have all of the diseases at once considering how prolonged the wet period was when I couldn't keep their foliage dry for anything. Pepper plants growing right beside all of them are fine. Most other plants in the garden are fine, though tons of trees outside the garden have all kinds of fungal issues on their foliage, and weeds outside the garden have powdery mildew. Virtually every leaf on every tomato plant has spider mites. They went from a pretty small amount on the tomatoes (though the bush beans had tons) to huge populations overnight. Many of the organic things I might spray for spider mites cannot be sprayed in high heat, meaning at temperatures of 90 or above, and we're already there. Usually, if the plants are healthy, they can largely outlast the spider mite infestation which will peak in July most years and decline, but I don't think tomato plants with the gamut of foliar diseases will outlast the spider mites. I guess I'll find out. Last year, the plants did recover from the spider mite infestation after a few weeks of it. I have new tomato plants started for fall too and just in the nick of time! While standing and looking at the plants last evening, I ruefully said to myself "and THIS is why we plant fresh tomato plants for fall", because sometimes I forget how quickly plants can go downhill at this time of the year. I am not complaining. If all the fruit on the plants now ripen and no other fruits form, we'll have far more tomatoes than we ever could eat fresh and probably more than I want to can, freeze or dehydrate. It isn't that our harvest is destroyed by these issues. It is just that the plants don't look so great any more. I can kinda relate. I bet I don't look too great when I drag myself in from the hot garden after being out there for a few hours. I've already worked outside for a couple of hours and came in to cool off. You shouldn't have to come indoors to cool off at 9:15 a.m., should you? It seems too early in the summer for the heat to feel so awful so early. If this keeps up, I'll spend July hibernating indoors. Last night I was out shortly before sunset putting the chickens up for the night and had just walked down the gravel driveway about 3 minutes before Tim drove up it. He stopped, paused, backed up, pulled forward again.....trying to run over a copperhead and kill it. There's a talent involved in killing a venomous snake by running over it because you have to brake hard and stop right on it, or it can survive having the car just roll over it. Usually he nails them, but this one didn't die and got away. We'll never know if that copperhead was there 3 minutes earlier as I walked by, but it is scary to me to think it might have been...and I was watching too. I even had a flashlight though I didn't really need one yet. It just makes it easier to see the snakes in the fading twilight. It was near the giant driveway puddle that has been like a small lake ever since all that rain fell. Well, today the puddle should dry up, so maybe that area will be less attractive then to snakes. Amy, I've hardly watered at all this year, but I am going to have to start watering the containers. I really got spoiled last year when the rain lasted through the first week of July and I didn't have to start watering them until summer was half over. I saw wilted leaves at the top of a cucumber plant this morning and my first thought was that it couldn't be too dry. Maybe it was too wet? Then, I came to my senses and realized I was looking at the first symptom of bacterial wilt. Since there is no cure for BW on cucumbers, and because cucumber beetles spread it from plant to plant, those three wilting leaves probably are the beginning of the end for these cucumber plants. I'm not happy about it, but it is fairly common here, so I always just grow them for as long as they last and then plant a succession crop as far away as possible, but not until all the BW-affected plants are pulled and composting and buried under a layer of something else on the compost pile. I grow County Fair pickling cukes because they are tolerant of bacterial wilt, but they are not completely resistant to it. So, maybe it won't spread quickly, but it inevitably will spread. When that happens, I'll be okay with it. I already have Sugar Baby watermelons growing nearby so that they can spread and climb the trellis after the cucumbers are done. It is funny. All through May and earliest June it didn't feel like summer was close at all, and then, BAM! The rain ended, the sun came out, the heat arrived, the air quality alerts began for some metro areas, and the summer pests and diseases mushroomed. We never really catch a break in summer here. It's just a matter of how early the summer issues begin and how bad they get. Oh, and it is mosquito city here. They are waiting for me every morning when I come out the exterior door. I hate them. Dawn