@Heidi68 I do not envy you those Japanese beetles, especially! We have plenty of tenacious bugs, but not those little monsters!

@MikeInBatonRouge oh you are so lucky! It is my new joy to fill a bowl with water & dawn, catch the little buggers and drown them

Thank you

I fight black spot - so my bushes usually look horrible but they still flower. Then I fight freaking Japanese beetles

Me too. I was incredibly lazy last year....

How are you doing with all the rain/water?

@Heidi68 The area where I live is South and West of Houston and we seem to do ok during these rain events. Our streets fill with water during the downpour, but it drains off pretty quickly once it stops. Houston on the other hand has real problems due to the fact that the city sits so low, and bayou's don't handle the water all that well. My town is Rosenberg if you want to look it up. Thanks for asking.

@Redheadedgammy My brother used to live there. He said his area was called the heights - it was 13 feet above the city center. He once told me at one flood large numbers of people were assembled at the end of his street. BTW I want to apologize for my coffee comment. After some thought it seemed rude.

@JackPedigo The Heights is a great area of Houston, and it does sit higher than most of Houston. They very rarely get any flooding there. I don't remember the coffee comment. I'm sure you didn't mean to be rude anyway.

@Redheadedgammy Whew, no I didn't and I'm glad. I just read that communication is more of an art than a science. Sometimes our art is not what we originally planned and not so beautiful.

It was high 80s here but you can feel the change....

@Heidi68 It has just gotten cool enough for tomatoes and eggplants to set fruit again(below 80 at night), my loquat is getting ready to bloom and my fennel is just sprouting.

@glennlab hmmmm below 80..... we have had a few 50s at night it has been nice sleeping with the windows open

@Heidi68 I'll try to remember this when it's 65-70 for Christmas, then I'm going to escape to the Southern Caribbean in Feb when the weather normally sucks here.

@glennlab