Returned home this week: Potato bugse near totally devastated the potatos so I dug a few up before th vines disappered.
The mulch is still six or more inches dep and the bottom is a two to three inch wad, with a lot of little sticks - (when you do not bag your own leaves, you often get a lot crap in there one wishes was not there) - that I had to take my fingers and pull up like bad sod.
Squished grubs and pupae in the mulch and dirt.
When I was a yout, I would have run inside , got my bug books and looked to see what they were; curiosity tisn't wha it used to be, and two I had never seen before.
Five plants, 11 potatoes; the largest was the size of a golf ball and the smallest the size of a large pea.
Two plants , absolutely nothing; not surprised just annoyed, So, I did some weeding and I did not get tired in the heat but would take a break just to dry out, and drink some pop, a lot of pop.
Probably most pop in one day, all different , in a lot of years.
Today I looked at the rose garden; it was a forrest waiting to spring forth, and Crab grass suddenly showed up in the past ten day..
Even though we had over 2 inches of rain ten days ago , ground was dry and very , very hard.
I had to dig out a lot of the trees, and a peruvian purple potato plant, it had five potatoes.
I took me four hours to weed the rose bed and probably would have gone quicker had I taken a maul hammer to pound the shovel intothe ground.
SO -- when I was done, I hooked up the sprinkler and ran it for two hours on both the rose and vegetable garden.
The veggies are doing suprisingly well, although but bugs killed my one butter cup squash plant.
Sweet corn is now ready to eat, tomatoes are gong gang-busters, and chiles plants look real good.
Picked all the onions that were totally carry overs from last year, fascinated that I got five good sized onions and another five the size of golf balls.
Ground cherries are producing edible ftuit now , so next week I will gather a few up.
Volunteer sunflowers and datura which I though may not make it , are very healthy but not growing where I though they would.
One reason I went home is I was going to drive down to Morgan, Mn area and take in the Farmfest, but when I spoke to a gent who had gone in recent years , he said it is no longer the big show for farm machinery display.
There is some , brought by dealers, not manufacturers, but most is now, less common/oddball compared to just 30 years back, machinery that is more specialized and not made by old well known manufacturers, so I saved 30-40 bucks, gas, entry fee, food and stayed home and pulled crab grass out of the lawn by the garden and the garden.
ly
The lawn down home is pisant horrid, but green, I sprayed lawn poison today, and will go back with more dedicated stuff for spurge, if Ihave to; brought my dedicated killer for sedge back up North as that crap is popping out all over.
A good chunk of the lawn up here is just plain dead; I dug some sedge out going down far enough to get ALL of it, but if I did all of it that way the lawn would look like bombing range with holes.
Digging the Sedge out was not reall that had ase it is so dry, once you go one chunk, and I mean chunk out, you can take your finger and pull back like sod, the dead grass and most live grass or weeds down to about three inches.
Pull it up and it is not much more thanhard dry, dust under it.
I knew the lawn was in tough shape when the clover started to turn yellow and die, but pulling Creeping Charlie is easy.
It is supposed to rain, HA, HAHA, HAHA HA, the next two day but I may water the North garden any way.
It does appear, that I defeated the CP bug up North as I saw none today and the plants look good but after being shaken and tossed this way and that to separate the vines, it does not look like a normal potato patch.
I was out every day last week squishing them by the dozens.
Odd note I do not remember planting mustard down south, last year, but I have HUGE six foot mustard plants growin amongst the the edge of the corn.
Now most of the corn is ten feet high and the mustard is standing tall.
With the yellow flowers kind of neat looking.
Back when I landscaped full time, I could not wait for this time of year and the snow to blow as working with that was better than being bent over 8 - 14 hours a day dealing with putting paver stones. 
(And another short, mild winter like we had last year!)
