"Why can't we come out and play?" these chickens are asking. The answer is "Because Joe, Wilson and I all have to be gone today and I don't want to come home this evening to find that more of you have vanished without a trace!" Sadly, on Wednesday Rocksteady and Ms. Peeps both vanished while Joe, Wilson and I were spending a day in town. The list of potential culprits is long, and we'll never know what happened. In addition to our recent bear visitor and the ever present threat of raccoons, there's been a Cooper's hawk hanging around the past few days. Plus, our neighbor's three dogs, bored of being completely ignored at home, have been roaming as far back as our place looking for some action. Given the lack of complete carnage, I'd put my money on the hawk. So for now, better to be a bored chicken than a dead chicken.

Between the summer's drought and the plethora of voracious bugs, I've at times been a very discouraged gardener this year. It doesn't help that I have two gardens I'm responsible for. The garden I get paid to tend has some definite advantages in that it usually gets first dibs on my gardening energy, has amazing soil and a ready supply of water. However, no amount of advantages could stop the onslaught of Mexican bean beetles, squash bugs and cucumber beetles in either garden. (Note: Those bronze-y lady bug looking things living alongside the spiny, squishy yellow bugs that are turning your green bean plants into crispy skeletons are NOT lady bugs that have gotten a little jaundiced from eating so many squishy yellow larvae. They are indeed the adult version of the squishy yellow bugs and are the reason you're in this mess to begin with. There seems to be some confusion about this amongst the general public.) However, I should focus on the positives, and there have been some serious successes in both gardens. In my boss' garden, one of the shining stars has been the black-eyed peas. They never seem to have anything bother them, and they're producing prolifically. In my own garden, I have some lush, healthy bell pepper plants with some huge red and orange peppers on them. The hard part is waiting for them to turn colors so I can pick them! I also harvested three 5-gallon buckets of decent sized onions from my garden the other day.   

Beautiful pepper patch!

And BEAUTIFUL peppers! :)

The squash bugs have left my butternut bed a little sparse looking,

but there's a decent amount of butternuts in there!