outside

My tokyo bekana are transplanted, but immediately full of holes. I suspect slugs. 

Doused the plants with soapy water, and set out a new slug trap- saw the idea online from another gardener. Cut slots in the side of a carton and sink it in the ground so the slots are level with surface, pour into the lower half a mixture of warm water, yeast and sugar, lid on top keeps rain from diluting it. I've been catching some big fat crickets and a handful of slugs every night. Not sure yet if it's enough to make a difference- the pests certainly seem to find these tender green leaves very tasty. 

I cut down all the glaze collards, and the blue collard from last year. Too bitter from heat to eat now and they were harboring lots of leaf hoppers (dark gray ones) and some brightly colored round beetles I know I've seen before, but if I identified them once, I can't recall the name now. 

I held a baby skink. I lifted the 'kiwi fern' coleus from the larger pot it nests in, to rotate it, and saw a scurry on the bottom of the bigger pot, with a bright blue skinny tail. A tiny skink- its body no wider than my pinkie finger. Its tail so very blue. It skittered around and around but couldn't climb out. Managed to get it to crawl onto my hand and lifted it out into the garden, where it dashed away. 

Few days ago when I moved the lawn mower, startled a large, very fat dark brown toad. And recently I also saw the leopard frog again- either it's grown bigger, or there's more than one. I hope they eat some of the slugs!

The poles my purple pole beans are growing on, fell sideways and lean against the wall now. 

It's crowded to get back there, so I propped them up with more short bamboo poles perpendicular off the wall. 

Cleaned off some unhealthy-looking foliage- same ailment or pest, but doesn't seem to be getting the best of the plants this time! The vines are so full of leaves it's hard to find the beans, in fact I missed quite a few from my first picking so now those are fattening up to make seed I can save. 

This will be part of our dinner tonight: