After two straight days of rain and a little over two inches total, we had our first frost on Friday night (Oct 9-10), and I decided to not cover anything, though I did have some mulch down around the squash fruit and hardy plants (kale, cabbage, turnips, beets, carrots).

1. Japanese Beetleslike to eat my:
   • wild rose brambles
   • rose of sharon
   • lemonbalm
   • rhubarb
   • Hey! Japanese beetles love the taste of Bindweed leaves!
   • velvet leaf
   • okra
   • sunflower
   • purple thistle

   Beware of using traps, as they tend to more often attract the beetles:

A full grown Japanese beetle flew into my face today, but was young enough to fall off and be smashed. At least, I hope I smashed it. Otherwise when it wakes up it will be nicely positioned next to my growing squashes.

Thus far in my vegetable garden, I have in broccoli, peas and beans from last year (the scarlet runners are from 2 years ago), all of which have at least one sprout up and protected from the bunnies who have very much of other stuff to eat. Well, the broccoli is not protected. I’m going to check it tomorrow. We got 1.5 inches of rain yesterday, and a tornado warning due to rotation over my town, which became a funnel cloud over some towns farther east, but no tornado. I wish I’d seen the rotation, yet except for the rain and the initial entrance, it was a pretty calm storm here.