Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

Saturday and Sunday were spent in Martinez judging. While there I started to get sick.  Slept about 10 hours Sat night, on my non-functioning camping pad.  Need to fix air leak.  Came back and slept for almost 3 days. While I was undoubtedly "under-the-weather" it is difficult to tease out how much given that there was also caffine deprivation and I quit taking an otherwise almost daily dose of Sudafed at the same time. I've given up and gone back to 1/2 mug of coffee (dark, strong and black) plus Sudafed (12 hr) as needed.   So that knocked out almost a week of activities.  Sigh.  I'm hiring a guy to weed whack for me tomorrow so I can get the electric fence on. Cows are due around the house tomorrow.  I did more than half of the work around the house, but the horse pasture boundary still needs to be done. 

Small jobs are finally getting done in the garden.   There is drip irrigation in the back of the garden; two small barrels and in the 6' bed.  Still need to do the new 8' bed in the walkway.  In Room 1 the east ends of beds 2 & 3 are now empty of bolting lettuce and garlic.  Tonight I'll plant them.  Those beds already have drip.  YAY more little plants out of their tiny containers.  On a much sadder note, several of the zinnias under the white rose had their lower stems munched on by pill bugs (AKA rolly-pollys). At least 5 zinnias are dead and will need to be replanted.  I'll add pill bugs (members of the crustacean family) to my list of nasty bugs to check for daily.   

The garden has been completely overwhelmed by beetles.  One is a tiny black beetle that seems to be native.  The other is cucumber beetle. There are far fewer cucumber beetles than there were last year, but.  For the past week I've been walking around with a really big yoghurt container (60 oz?) partly filled with soapy water and knocking beetles into it. This works better in the early morning when the beetles are a little cold and slow.  The first couple of days I got hundreds of beetles. Now I'm getting 50 or so.  I assume that is partly the cyclical nature of bugs, and I'll have another hatch to deal with soon, but it is encouraging.  Both beetles feed extensively on callendula flowers. It is pretty easy to knock them out of the flower and into the water.  The black beetles especially like onion flower heads, burrowing in among the unopened, tender flower clusters.  Very satisfying to clean out. They also love the yellow hollyhock.  Only a few have actually tried to chew on the cucumbers or squash.  My goal is to reduce the population by hand and then spray nematodes again to help with any larva in the soil.  

My friend Phoebe left some very large, self watering, pots of plants with me. The hole into the reservoir is big enough to stick the hose through and have plenty of room around it.  Here is what I wrote to her: 
I was just filling the reservoir on your red pot, and 1/2 way through  decided to turn it 180.  As I bent over to resume filling it, out squeezed a very large toad! It took him at least three wiggles to get out. I apologized profusely for disturbing him, though it is unclear if he understood.