What a busy place here this morning. Very enjoyable reading. This Idyll thread sometimes feels as though I am reading about ten books at once a little bit at a time. [g] Didn't want Jerri to feel lonely either..[g]. Woody...thanks for posting those pics of Misty and Copper. Misty is so cute! She reminds me of a dog in the movies, but I can't think of it's name. You know the first photo you showed of Copper, with nothing else in the photo, he didn't look that large. Next to the love seat and Misty...he looks huge! lol I always loved to see dogs play together. Especially a small dog with a larger dog. It is amazing that the large dog knows to be gentle most of the time and that the small dog is usually not too frightened. So when you say you foster, you have more than one dog in the house at one time. See when I heard of fostering, I thought you would take one dog at a time until they found a home and then another. It sounds like there are more dogs than foster homes and that they keep you busy! That is nice that you and Marie are near each other, but I can see it would take a special effort to get together. So GLAD you are feeling better! :-) Jerri...... flooring that is pet friendly...well...if accidents are expected, I am not really sure which is the best solution. Our last dog had epilepsy the last three years of his life and that caused a lot of accidents. I never had a lingering odor from dog accidents. I would get to them right away with lots of paper towels, blot as much as possible, then scrub with a mix of water, dish soap, and white vinegar, then rinse and then blot. Always took care of it. We have hardwood floors with area rugs here. The Living Room has a small 6x9 rug, even the kitchen is hardwood. I have been considering redoing the upstairs floors and if I had to choose, I was thinking of bamboo, just for it's environmental factors, and I really like the look of it too. I just bought a bamboo cutting board and I love it! It is so hard and smooth and pretty. denise...what a great shot of the bee swam. As a kid,I was not really afraid of bees, but not totally comfortable around them either. I have only been stung once or twice and no big deal. It has been over 30 years since I was stung and I am pretty comfortable around bees, although wasps still give me a little hesitation. A swarm or a hive, I would not be comfortable enough for though. Cute conversation with your DH about the cats. I could just picture it. I really got a kick out of him pointing at the cats that would all have their own shed. lol 'Returnable dogs'...I have to agree with Woody. Ideally, you hope that people think long and hard before taking home a pet, and knowing what lengths shelters go to, to assure a dog goes to a good home, I can't help but think that dogs that are returned are a minor occurence, would that be right? If a family can actually have a pet in their home for more than two weeks and not bond with it enough to want to keep it, then the dog is probably better off making the change. After a year? That seems like it must be really unusual and maybe something significant changed for that family? Hopefully he will be luckier the second time around. Cindy, why are you thinking of having more than one pair of muck shoes? Mary...so sorry you didn't finish the peeps dioramas in time. [g] Maybe next year?! I would suggest saving it for next year, but with ketchup? guess not..lol. Martie, sounds like you will also have a lot to move this year, but you already have help lined up?! How lucky are you! So, I keep reading little bits referring to a previous move. Someday when you have time, you could tell me the story of how long have you lived where you are, what were your gardens like in your last house and the story of the move..etc. :-) One of my computer order boxes came today. Just a few cables and one piece of software. The machine won't ship until Monday. Definitely will let you know how it goes Chelone...sounds like you are ready for a new one, if your memory is that low! Loved that garden you all are looking at in the old Idyll reunion pics! Ok...time to go...enjoy the rest of the weekend.. :-) pm2

Air starvation is what I was indicating from your description of starts easier with the air filter off allowing adequate air to fuel mixture. As JL has advised dirty or loaded filter medium will cause this extreme condition. However as JL has requested (orientation) if the hose connects to the venturi area of the carb it will have a direct effect on air entrainment into the fuel air mixture. As we have stated previously , not having you engine at arms length make diagnosis rather difficult (hit & miss) . A torn or cracked or loose impulse line is something any technician inspects and replaces as a matter of fact. This from a former diesel mechanic who has chased numerous vacuum / return to tank fuel line issues causing air entrainment hard or no start diesel applications . Anyhow for what ever reason glad you have solved your hard starting dilemma :)

for most people its valve adjust but for a select few its the engine design itself. the piston gets lubed by the engine splashing oil. if you dont change the oil yearly and are not using the correct weight oil, the top side of the piston and occasionally the head also will create tollerances so tight even the compression release wont be enough for the starter to push thru. usually i sugesst pulling the engine apart and cleaning the piston, valves, rings, and valve head. get then super clean abd put it back together. keep up on the maintence and it should run fine. also check the seloniod, they do go bad and it takes all that CCA to get these engines spinning

Robbie, The short answer, of course, is that yes, there is such a thing as "too much rain" but the sticky issue is just how much is too much, and it varies from plant to plant as well as the plant's stage of growth and how fast the soil drains, etc. Rarely will too much rain harm lawnturf unless the puddles are so large that the roots/stolons are underwater for a very prolonged period. Even in that case, you are likely to see yellowing and maybe fungal diseases on grass blades, but not actual death of the lawn grass. With ESTABLISHED trees and shrubs, if the soil is at all well-drained or even moderately slow-draining, long-term damage is unlikely. With perennials and annuals, too much rain can be a problem and plants that prefer well-drained soil and drier soil may indeed rot. Generally, though, if your rainy period is only a week or two, followed by a drier period, the plants won't suffer long-term harm. (Last year, with weeks and months of excess moisture, a lot of us DID lose plants,) With veggies, the effect of too-much moisture relates to the growth stage. As you correctly believe, unsprouted seeds are in the most damage, especially since they can wash away before they sprout. Carrot seeds, and other similar tiny seeds, are MOST prone to do this. Even sprouted seeds can get rot, especially if the rainfall is accompanied by cold temperatures AND if the seedlings don't have at least 3 or 4 true leaves and some well-developed roots to absorb that water. The corn should be fine. It is at the PERFECT stage for a lot of rain and will respond by growing like mad, which is terrific. The only trouble I ever have with excess moisture and corn is corn smut, and your corn is not at the stage to be affected by it, so that's a good thing, and corn smut is more likely in spring than in fall too. Well, sometimes the combination of hard wind/hard rain will cause cornstalks to lodge (fall over) but not with corn so young. If your corn were a couple of feet tall, lodging might be an issue, but it is too short at this point for rain or wind to knock it over, I think, You might check your corn roots and make sure soil hasn't washed away from that. It SHOULDN'T have, but might have if your rain fell very quickly and very hard. How many ears you get off of one corn stalk varies depending on the variety and insect pressure and how closely the stalks are planted to one another AND also depending on whether you have raccoons, deer, corn earworms or corn borers. In a perfect world, you should get two ears per stalk. With a very few varieties, you might get 3 ears, or even 4 (though rarely) although anything beyond the 2 ears usually will be very small and perhaps not large enough to bother harvesting. There are a very few old varieties (Six-Shooter is one that comes to mind) that consistently produce more than two ears per stalk. So, hope for two, expect one and be thrilled if you get three. Getting the ears to grow is not the hard part--getting the ears to survive the predators and ripen is the hard part. Pumpkins and squash, if they don't rot, love water, guzzle it like crazy and grow with wild and reckless abandon. If they are up and have true leaves, it is hard to give them to much water. These seeds also are not especially prone to rotting as long as the soil is relatively warm (above 70 or 75 degrees), which it is. Turnips and carrots like water and don't mind wet soil, so they ought to be fine, except for the issue of carrot seeds washing away, which could happen. Just watch your soil and make sure it doesn't "crust over" as it dries, because those tiny carrot seeds/sprouts have a hard time breaking through the crusty soil as they sprout. One way to prevent that (next time) is to interplant radish seeds every couple of inches in your beds of carrot seeds. The radish seeds will sprout first and will break through the soil surface, thereby paving the way for the carrot seeds. And, radishes mature fast, often in as little as three weeks, so you can harvest them and the carrots wil have plenty of space to grow. In the future, you can keep carrot seed from washing away in rain by covering the entire seedbed with cardboard, newspaper, plywood, or a thin layer of straw. If you use the cardboard, newspaper or plywood, lift it and look underneath it every morning and every evening to check for your first green sprouts. As soon as you see those first sprouts, remove the cardboard, newspaper or plywood. The covering keeps the seed in place if it rains and also prevents wind from blowing away the top soil/seed and keeps the soil from crusting over too. To me, the only hard thing about growing carrots is getting them to sprout before the seed washes away or blows away or rots (only an issue in cold soil). Turnips are easy. They'll sprout and grow and seldom wash away and seldom rot, so be patient and you should see leaves soon. The temperatures are in the perfect range for tomatoes to bloom right now. The only issue is the humidity and rain. With the larger fruited (NOT cherry, grape, currant or most plum) tomtoes, excess humidity and moisture, especially in combination with higher temperatures, can inhibit the pollen and cause it to be "sticky" or, sometimes, infertile. Just keep shaking the blooming plants, and you should see small tomatoes in 7 to 10 days. If the flowers drop and small fruits haven't formed, your plants aren't happy with either the temperatures or the humidity. In time, though, blooms will set fruit. Some of my summer tomatoes (those that survived the drought after I stopped watering) have new leaves already, and a few have blooms. We've had at least three days of 99-100% humidity, though, so I know that the blooms may not set fruit, but once the rain stops, it should happen. Dorothy can address your asparagus issues. I had it in Texas, but not here, although it (and a million other things) are on my "one of these days" list. I think the harvest window here is a little later, and perhaps a little longer, that what we had in Fort Worth. As long as you keep the GRASS out of your asparagus beds, all should be well. If grass ever infiltrates, especially bermuda grass, it is nearly impossible to reclaim the asparagus bed from the grass. I am assuming your soil drains well to moderately well. In those conditions, it would take a LOT of rain to hurt a veggie garden when the soil is warm. Excess moisture PLUS cold soil (below 55 to 60 degrees) is much more damaging than excess moisture plus warm soil. Even if you have very slow-draining clay, I don't think the recent rains are enough to hurt much of anything. The biggest issue in the next few days for many Oklahoma gardeners will be the possible appearance of moisture-loving fungal and bacterial diseases. These will mostly show themselves via leaf spots. Damping off of very new and young seedlings is a possibility too, and it is hard to prevent when rainfall is heavy. IF you have a prolonged rainy spell, like Scott, Dorothy, Ilene and a few others had in the spring, then you might see a few nutritional issues caused by the inability of root systems to take up nutrients because excess water clogs up their roots. It usually takes at least 4 straight weeks of extremely wet soil for that to even begin to be an issue though. Some of us experienced that last year, but only because the heavy rainfall occurred while the plants still had pretty small root systems. Finally, sometimes a VERY rainy period causes some physiological problems, such as cracking and splitting of tomatoes or melons. This occurs because the fruits'/veggies' flesh grows more quickly than the skin so the skin can't keep up and literally splits open. Also, with tomatoes, alternating wet-dry cycles can cause problems with calcium uptake that leads to blossom end rot of the tomatoes (and peppers and eggplants as well, though less often). So, after the rain ceases and your soil dries out, strive to keep it evenly moist, but NOT sopping wet, to reduce the incidence of BER. Did I cover everything you were wondering about? If not, let me know. And, feel free to pick our brains some more if you want. It may be too wet to be out in the garden right now (words I have NOT been able to say in months), but we can talk gardening! Dawn