I'm staging some garden treatments over the next couple of days. The grasshoppers have been fierce this year, and I treated the small ones the other day with a bait, but the big ones devour everything. I sprayed a slurry of Surround WP - it is a very fine grind of kaolin clay (the stuff that is in cat litter). 95% clay, 5% wetting agents. I added a little orange oil as a surfactant and to clobber a few other bugs. And I disturbed some good ones along the way. But preying mantis eat other bugs, so the layer of clay shouldn't bother them.

Dinner was a lovely concoction - starting with onions and peppers from the yard, then adding cut up zucchini I picked today. Tomato sauce I made yesterday with much of the same plus home-grown tomatoes, and a mix of a Czech sausage similar to kielbasa and finishing with the last of a container of feta and a generous sprinkle of Parmesan. :)

The dogs and I went for a walk, but it wasn't very far and it was low energy; it's hot and muggy out, so it was a chance for them to get out of the yard. We shimmied down the bank to walk along the creek and let them all get a snoot-full of mud and algae.

This morning we concluded that my son's phone, while perhaps initially lost, is not going to be returned by whoever found it. I contacted the carrier and it was shut off - and I wish there was a way to remotely wipe it. He needs to back up to a cloud setting, not keep data in the phone. A few days ago I decided it was time to clear out all of the old text messages; I wish he had done the same.

Interesting week coming up, in many ways.

SRS