Well...came home from 2 week vaca to Montana...all unprotected kohlrabi, brocc & brussel sprouts denuded of their leaves. Oh, and peas completely decimated. I hate California ground squirrels...aka grey diggers.
Camera is in the leafy wad. See the USB plug on the other end? 
See the camera lens in the center? This one was shoved into a thick hedge shrub: 
Many of you have big rural spreads; but it's not hard to imagine that this crime method might migrate to suburban areas beyond California. Thought I'd share the link so you can be on the lookout.
Cops issue urgent warning to homeowners who find strange item outside their home
So, forget about tomatoes, hostas, geraniums, hydrangea, impatiens, lilies, liriope, English holly, arbor vitae, azalea and so many other ornamentals—eaten to the nub. Critters dig up tulip bulbs, and even pull mums and wire garden fences right out of the ground. Deer stroll the front sidewalks, munching as they go.
Then there are the dog walkers who defy the bylaws and back their entitled royal doggies right up to your plantings to do their business. So my focus has been on perennials and annuals that at least the animals don't like to eat!
I had a great spring this year with two colors of clematis blooming beautifully, and a gorgeous display of ground cover bugleweed in bloom, which it does for about 2-3 weeks before reverting to its normal all-green leaf state.
Diana...I wish the view from my back door looked like your graphic!
(I do have some foxglove growing the “Wild” “Fairy Island” corner of my property!)
Yes, I hear objections, no, I know there are no “fairies”, but there are beneficial insects that need a relatively undisturbed area to live in. A lot of lit-up fireflies hang out there!
I’ve been arguing with ChatGTP for the past few hours trying to get it to give me some code for the BASIC programming language while fitting into the constraints of the subset of BASIC that my control modules use.
In summary: ChatGPT has poor reading comprehension and possibly ADHD.
Version 6 had no errors returned by the module at least. It isn’t working though, else the linear actuator would be extended to mimic opening the window when it’s over 70 degrees.
Also got a version 7 without the SLEEP command which isn’t used on these things. I told it to stick with the tutorial on the product website but it kept using commands that aren’t in the tutorial.
I noticed when I log into ChatGPT, it finds an avatar or profile pic I used years ago so I can’t help wondering if maybe I’m getting StupidGPT or WrongGPT based on my “Far Right” internet profile with Big Tech based on years of data collection.
Between the 7 versions and the tutorials on the mfg website, I have enough to make it work. Open when over 70 degrees and close when under 65 is easy.
Adding the wind speed in to open/close it to 50% open when the wind is over 35 for 2 accumulated minutes in a 10 minute period is the hard part. It needs to be a rolling 10 minute period - recalculate every 2 minutes. I think ChatGPT gave me the basic outline of math for that.
We went to Lucas Oil Speedway Friday for what was supposed to be two nights of High Limit sprint car racing but Mother Nature had other plans. They were able to complete the Friday night show, but Saturday was blown away and swamped not long after qualifying was finished.
That left Sunday afternoon to put the camper to bed and get the weekend chores accomplished. Mrs. Augie mowed the grass. I did the watering and weeding in the victory garden, watered the chestnut trees, and reseeded the skips in my sweet corn patch.
If the rain holds off today I've got a date with the weed whacker after work. The deluge that hit the racetrack didn't make it to my place. We only got 1/10th" so I'm hoping the weed whacker races get rained out too.