The Care and Keeping of Plants and Animals

Plants
My garden hasn't been doing all that well lately.  Today, we harvested our last shot of snap peas.  They are so delicious.  We followed advice I found online and ripped out the plants, then scoured the plants for the pods.  We got a fair amount for a last harvest.  This is what it looks like sans peas:

Given our recent 100+ temperatures, I don't think the roma tomatoes look too bad.  They're just a little dead around the bottom.  And some have blossom end rot.  And the bugs are eating some.  Okay, maybe they're doing pretty lousy.

My squash is also being killed by cucumber beetles.  Specimen one:

 Specimen two:

I only have one two-inch by half-inch yellow squash growing.  All the people at the farmer's markets have TONS of squash and zucchini.  I'm working on getting these suckers to produce.

I did get one ripe tomato off of the semi-dying plant above.  Isn't she gorgeous? :o)

And so far, I've got one female-palm-sized green pepper.  Of everything still growing right now, the peppers are doing the best.  Each plant has at least one decent pepper on it.  None of the others are quite this big though.

Animals
After the hamster cage fiasco this morning, we needed to shuffle cages.  *B*'s big red-eared slider (a terrapin) has needed a new tank for a long, long time.  But aquariums are very expensive.  He decided, in a moment of brilliance, to buy a $130 150 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank rather than the $400 150 gallon aquarium.  Shamrock looks so happy (when he's not hiding from me).

Because Shamrock got a tank upgrade, my Terpy (same species) got a tank upgrade as well.

My turtle's not camera shy though.  Though he doesn't look very big, he's HUGE!  He's about the size of my hand, fingers included.  He was one of those Myrtle Beach silver dollar turtles.  They said they'd only get to big as big as their tank.  That is true, because if you don't get them a bigger tank, they die.  So he's been through five tanks now in his three years of life.

And as for Sixie, she'll get Terpy's old tank tomorrow.  It has been a looooong day, and she's doing okay for now in the bucket in our closet.  We did, however, find a fair amount of blood on the sock in her bucket.  I can't find a single speck of blood on her, though.  I'm really hoping that it's not an internal trauma.  She's not squeaking in pain, and I was able to handle her just as much as usual.  This hamster may have been named because she was the sixth animal I brought into our house, but I'm beginning to suspect she's got six lives, too.

Simple Pleasure Thursday

My simple pleasure for today is thinking the worst, but having everything turn out okay.

A story: This morning, I lumbered out of bed and dragged myself into the shower. I was sudsing up my hair, thinking deeply about something I've now forgotten, and I heard a crash. Almost immediately, I knew what it was:


Wicket likes to sit on top of the hamster cage. To keep her from doing that, we put it on a bookshelf. So far so good. She had only attempted to get up there one time up to this point, but I caught her. This time, she pulled it over on top of herself.

Awful thoughts were spinning around in my head: that Wicket had pulled over the tank, crushing/cutting herself or Sixie. If not, Sixie was a playtoy that Wicket was smacking around. So I ran out, hair full of suds, dripping from head to toe, just in time to catch the hamster running away. I managed to spirit her away into her ball before a) one of the cats got her or b) she disappeared into the secret passageways of the house that only rodents find.

In the end, it turned out alright:

The only reason she's wet and crazy looking is because I was wet and crazy looking when I picked her up :o)

Looks like we'll be going to PetSmart today...