> My scare birds don't look like people. They are shinny, rattley, shaky things hanging in the tree. I am still looking for the rubber snake, but the rest of my artillery is already in place.

This sounds like more fun than what we did. And maybe easier. My dad would drape our cherry tree with plastic netting and that pretty much kept the blackbirds away. If we didn't net the tree, we had to be quicker than the birds or we'd be left with the pits.

Hanging nets on a 25-30 foot tall cherry tree takes a lot of netting, clothes pins, a ladder or two and some long poles. It also gets in the way some when trying to pick the cherries but that is why we used clothes pins to connect the sections.

This year is the first time I've had room to plant a large garden. I got a late start this year because it stayed colder for longer than usual and the rain was pretty constant until about two weeks ago. But I have some corn planted, peas, beans, squash, bell peppers, lots of different tomatoes, pumpkins, watermelon and canteloupe, as well as wild flowers. The soil that isn't in the garden boxes has a fair amount of clay that I didn't amend so we'll see how that does. And the beans, and maybe some of the corn, look like they are being attacked by something but I have yet to find a slug/snail/bug that could be causing it. Whatever it is, they are sneaky. Some of it was started when I planted and some are from seeds, hopefully to stagger the harvest so we aren't totally overloaded at one time.

I don't know if it is the seed or the soil but the corn I planted has been erratic. One row only had two sprout and another had about 7 sprout. I finished planting all four rows and put some new seed in the feeble rows. We'll see.

We leave for England on Sunday so hopefully it gets watered well while we are gone, we don't get a serious heat spell, and the enemy weeds and varmints keep their mouths off. After ten days away, I'll come home to find out how the war is going in our yard.

Ferrick