More rain here too Jerry, we had an inch and a half since Saturday and more to come the next three days.
Last year I let the grass grow tall so wild flowers could grow out in the back part of the back yard. My dog got a tick. I think it was from the tall grass I was walking him through. I looked it up on the internet right away to see how to remove it. I read about how the climb up on the tall grass to get onto the animals. After that I have been mowing it all. They say not to burn them off too because they will regurgitate back into your blood. You need skinny tweezers or tool made for pulling tics so you don’t crush the head and pull slowly out. I read one trick is to tie a half knot in some thread and synch it down below his head lightly and lift up on both ends of the thread so you get his head out with him.
I shot a wood chuck today. He was up in the mulberry tree. They cause havoc around here!
Dad shot a groundhog a couple of weeks ago. He was visiting with his neighbor( who is tad bit on the back woodsy side) and told him about it. The neighbor was upset that he had thrown it away. He said his wife makes the best roasted groundhog. I’ve eaten a lot of game but never tried groundhog , lol.
Just a little in put here on ticks from my own experience. I live in southwest Missouri and we have lots of ticks here. Where I grew up we had 200 acres of woods mixed with small clearings. I have been bitten by ticks thousands of times. A short walk in the woods and you can have 15 or 20 ticks crawling on you. And about July the seed ticks hatch out. They are small as a speck of pepper and they crawl up a grass stem in one large ball of maybe a hundred. When u brush against them they latch onto your clothes and are so small they can crawl through the fabric . As soon as they get to skin they start biting. You have to take all of your clothes off , and shower using something to really scrub to get them all off.
Big ticks I just pull off with my fingers. I have read that this can force bacteria back through the tick into you but I have never had issues. People are always concerned about leaving in the head. I have never had this happen to me. Tick bites make me itch so I find them fairly quick. The only ticks I have broken in two were on a dog. They are left way too long and burrow in deep, the skin around it swells out and further buries it. These are the worst to get off. You can’t get them with your fingers and you have to use tweezers. The partially filled tick bodies are starting to get soft and if you are not careful the tweezer will cut the tick in half and leave the head in.
I’ve never tried groundhog either. I’ve had alligator tail which was unexpectedly tasty.
That’s pretty exotic, I had barbecued raccoon once. I would say it was different.
Good use for raccoon. 
Was it gamey? Fried gator tail tasted almost like a less fishy, firmer version of lobster claw meat. Rich.
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Yes it was gamey , and the meat was very dark. It was kind of like greasy pork but in pieces like chicken.
Well, I live in NE Indiana and it is raining much to often.
I do not know exactly what route that I should go to work tomorrow.
My normal route is under water.
Clear indication for BBQ sauce. 
My wife was complaining that I short-changed tomatoes this year (something I don’t like and grow for her), as I converted a lot of space to exotic potatoes (which I love).
So, I squeezed in another garden bed between a staircase and the Triple Crown blackberries (shorter than usual this year due to the winter die-back).
In addition to a couple tomato plants, I also planted spinach for my daughter and a Chinese beans for my mother in law. And of course a few more potatoes for me.
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I hate to say it Bob, but that might cause her reason to nag all summer and into fall. Good luck!
This evening I opened the doors and windows in the living room to let the cooler outdoor air in. Shortly after that my NOAH radio station stated that the current temperature was 100. That 100 degrees still felt better than the indoor air and was on its way down from the high for the day.
I’m hoping for a not violent shower Thursday early afternoon.
Well, I suppose I could looks for more places for raised beds
In the back of my mind, many (probably not all) of the garden beds could become fruit/berries at some point.
It would drive me crazy to not be able to make a left turn after coming down the stairs.
Not me , I would come down and trip over it about 50 times before I learned that.
im waiting for tropical storm Bill to leave. So far it has dropped 3 inches and not moving away very fast. In the last 60 days we have had 26 inches of rain. My peaches and plums are about 7 feet tall and just as wide because of it all. Back in april i pruned very hard and they might have been about 2.5 feet tall.
I’ve stepped over it a couple times, but I almost always go straight or turn right after going down the stairs, so it shouldn’t be too big a problem. I’m much more irritated by the 5’ tall kiwi trellis which I regularly hit my head on. It hides, just over the bill of my hat, so my head is the first thing which notices it.