Another clear, sunny day and discoveries

 It's very warm comparatively to typical what we have. It got up to 77 today and not a speck of clouds in the sky, but a good wind blowing. So you know what that means. Supposed to cloud over tomorrow and have 80% chance of rain on Friday then clearing off again. Good timing for gardens.

I wasn't able to get a lot of pictures due to Dolores coming out to the garden at the same time and I helped her make a spot for a planter box near the west bed. She's going to grow onions and her chives in the box  using her own compost and some potting soil. 

The first thing I noticed when I got there was a scraped hole in the west bed. No plants were harmed but it was close. Judging by the footprint it looks like it might be a possum or skunk.

The soil was quite dry so it had to happen last night or very early morning. Soil was slightly disturbed along the front where the onions are but not as much digging. Then I looked at the raised bed.

Much deeper hole with more vigorous dirt throwing. Not surprising really as this is a very good bed for bugs and worms. I filled in the cavities and smoothed it all out then got to watering. Will have to go out this evening and try to cover up as much of the open dirt as possible. As expected, the south bed was untouched due to the cover.

I moved the pot rack closer to the bed and now realize that is a bad idea. Will be fixing that position too. I have a piece of wood over the container with the water to deter mosquitos hopefully. I moved it to make room for Dolores to put her box in front of the logs but we decided on the end of the south bed and cleared out some of the smaller logs. Dolores discovered a shed skin from one of the lizards, she was afraid it was a snake skin. I told her what it was and it was all good even if it was a snake. I then turned over one of the logs in my hand and discovered a black widow egg sac and pointed it out to her.

In moving the logs I also discovered about five or six decollate snails hiding at the end of a log and a cache of eggs. I smashed as many of the eggs as possible and tossed most of the snails over the wall. One of them slipped out of my fingers and landed somewhere in the open dirt near the raised bed. Oopsy. But that's about two dozen eggs that won't be hatching into snails in the garden. I'm good with that. We were piling the logs up along the south wall but it's not far enough for me.

That compost area is looking rather trashy, need to fix that as well. I need a large tarp to dump all that out and combine it better. Lots and lots of scraps today as we had mashed taters yesterday and I cut up some carrots, celery, tomatoes and onions. Great stuff for composting. Dolores tore up an egg carton to put in her little planter box and I refrained from being a know it all and let her do what she wants. She also put in some mostly fresh kitchen scraps in the bottom and then more soil on top. If it works for her, not going to say no.

Oh and I pulled up one of the cauliflower plants as it was being overshadowed by the cilantro, the Romaine is still going strong and the chives are as well. I think whatever animal was traipsing through my bed stepped on the small chive plant so had to fix that a bit but no real harm to anything. 

I drove within a few blocks of the library yesterday and was even in HD day before that but we were on errands and wasn't going to take a side trip a that time. Will try again tomorrow or Friday, library was closed yesterday interestingly enough. So wouldn't have done any good to do that. 

That's all for pictures and news, hoping to take more pictures in a few hours when I go check on things again. Then will see how the rain forecast develops.