good news/bad news

the bad news is that critter problems continue on campus as they have all season...starlings savaged the winter wheat and mice continue to dig tubers at the pgp while over at the community garden one of the two peppers i photographed two days ago has vanished...so i applied another dose of repellant to the pepper, eggplant, and tomato beds... nothing has touched the tomatoes yet...they look fine...just a precaution...that's part of the good news...the other part is that there are still quite a few blooms on the eggplants ( along with a few that haven't opened yet ) and some are on the way to producing...in talking around i find it has been an odd year for many gardeners ( raccoons are a continuing problem for one in chesterton and a couple in miller complain of rabbits and deer...there are deer here too but there are also fields of produce behind johnson's and remus farms that provide a wider variety and less traffic than my street so i am spared the white tail problem ) and this all just seems to fit in the pattern...i expect squirrel predation in my yard ( and i am surprise the hopi blue on the south side of the house isn't gone yet ) but the pgp has been remarkably fortunate until this season...i'm not sure of the community garden's history in its first season...but its second is becoming difficult.