hippy, It would seem that there is no chemical fungicide at all safe to use in the summer heat. If you think you have a fungus issue, the only thing left to use is organic. The organic community has been very satisfied with corn meal for nearly 20 years now. I'm not sure how greatly debated it is, but corn meal is the only reason I have a lawn. It was being consumed by fungus for all of 2001. By the time I tried the corn meal I had all but given up. Three weeks after the corn meal, I had new grass growing where it had been dead for months. Compost tea cannot be made in the summer. The purpose of compost tea is to extract beneficial aerobic microbes from compost, feed them in the presence of bubbled oxygen for 24 hours, and immediately spray that tea on the garden. The problem with doing that in the summer is that water at temperatures higher than 80 degrees cannot hold enough oxygen to support any aerobic biological life. It doesn't matter how much air you bubble through, the fact of chemistry is that warm water cannot hold enough oxygen. As soon as you put the compost into warm water, the beneficial aerobic microbes begin to die.

What you were describing with sticking its "tail" into your arm sounds like it was the female trying to oviposit its eggs into your arm, which wouldn't be far off from the way a wasp sting works ... just the damselfly's ovipositor isn't modified to also sting (that's why only female bees and wasps sting ... males don't have the weapon). I used to get dragonflies to climb onto my fingers all the time, never had one bite me. I've never encountered mating ones to have them try to lay eggs on me.

We finally got started planting behind the raised bond beam! Talk about a lot of work! We had to build a retaining wall behind the curved portion of the wall with Castlerock, and those things are heavy! I haven't planted anything along the new sundeck, but hope to start that today. We also still have four Pygmy Date Palms for behind the raised bond beam, that we have to plant. Two will flank either side of the CI Date Palm for some added privacy. Here is a close up of the area we planted: I'm super pleased with the look of the ferns. We're lucky in that we only get about 1 hour of direct sun there a day, and it's from about 5:30PM - 6:30PM. Hopefully these Kimberly Queens will thrive there. I looked forever, before finding these bowls for the lower portions of the bond beam. There is a really good nursery, showcased in Southern Living, in a nearby town. They're my go-to place for hard-to-find Texas plants, and they have awesome decorative items. The bowls look amazingly like Oklahoma Wister flagstone! I've planted this combo before. It'll be white in the back (Angelonia), Liriopi in the middle as a perennial, and eventually the purple Scaevola and New Gold Lantana should spill over the front. With the Blue Plumbago in the back, the color combo should look nice. In about a month, it should be totally full. All I'll have to do is change out the annuals each season for color. The fence is in. Now all we have left is the flagstone inlay and the flagstone on the steps and we're done!

Weed block fabric, bad. Weed block plastic, positively evil. That's all I'm sayin' about that. There's always going to be differing opinions about whether or not someone "should" have done Project X to his/her house, and I think it's rather a waste of time to discuss taste. But what I don't understand is when work on a house -- or a garden -- is done 90% of the way, when just a little extra push/time/money would've made it a great job. Examples? How about the houses that have "finished basements" -- but there are no switch plates, base moldings or light fixtures installed? Just a couple of bulbs dangling from the ceiling. How much more work would it have taken to add those little finishing touches that really complete the room? Or the back garden where they've splashed out on quality paving materials and had them delivered to the site -- but then they're dropped randomly onto the ground instead of being properly placed, and they're wobbly and unsafe to step on. Why not take the extra time to prepare the base and secure that material in a way that's appropriate for your climate and practical for people using it? Or the "sunroom addition" that's larger than a bump-out but too small to hold usable furniture... I was in one not long ago that was five by seven feet. If you could afford to hire the workers to pour the slab foundation and build the "room," how much more cost would've been involved in making that room 9 x 11 instead?