Paul, I can understand how your wildlife would be wanting to taste/eat some of your succulents in your summer arid conditions. Seems like each of us has critter problems of different types.

In my garden, it is the nasty grasshoppers, they will bite on anything. Hoping the mantids mature faster, so they can have a good grasshopper meal.

It seems this coming Thursday will be the hottest, already forecasting 112F, so for sure it will exceed several degrees more. Yesterday we briefly got into 112F already at around 7pm, when initial forecast was at 105 to 106F.

Oh my.
And here I was feeling sad that it will be about 86° later this afternoon. Not feeling so bad now. And sorry for you Tarev.

After this week long heat wave, we may settle back into the high 80's to low to high 90F's. Would gladly settle for that. I am just thankful we still cool down from midnight to dawn. But no rain at all, so as with typical summer weather, survival of the fittest.

It is over 100 here in NM, and it was 115 at my house in AZ yesterday.

I was just out checking semps and had one area where a lot of them are in pots sitting on a high table. My husband made a cage for them out of a wood frame and covered it with bird netting. I just noticed that something ate a hole in the mesh and got inside, knocking over pots and taking samples of a lot of them. It sure is discouraging. My husband has gone to town to buy metal hardware cloth to remake the cage for them. I'm determined to have some nice plants.

Wow! Ate a hole in the mesh..must be one super hungry critter! Hope you can find what it was!

My guess is a chipmunk or squirrel. We've had the most problems with them both in the greenhouse and outside.

Tarev, glad to hear that you will be cooling down a bit.

Karin have you tried putting pieces of Irish Spring hand soap around the outside of the netting? Some say it will help keep squirrels away?
That is one persistant critter. A Rat Terrier? Squirrels only move around in the daylight hours. Rat Terriers love squirrels.

I had something climb over the chicken wire and chain link and almost devour a mugwort plant. Probably a ground squirrel, again. Frustrating. I am beginning to think the lizards may be chomping bites out of some of my succulents. The birds will destroy seedlings and small cuttings and plants like thyme, but the bites missing seem too large to be one of our little local birds, although some of my echeveria cuttings and potted pachyphytum have clearly been pecked at. A bit annoying but since all of my black widows have disappeared since my reptile tenants showed up, I suppose I should just consider it as payment for their exterminator service. no more juicy spiders so an occasional nibble on a big juicy leaf.

Paul I think that is a very good trade off.

Karen sorry you're having so many critter troubles:(

Thanks, Greg. If it's true that the squirrels are only out in the daytime, it should get better when we're here full time. We're in the middle of the big move, so we're still running back and forth about every 4 days now. :sad:

When we're here, our dog is outside most of the time. We do have lots of lizards, and lots of black widows, too.

We used to have a rat terrier mix, Lynn. He was incredible at catching mice, rats and ground squirrels. He killed them in one pounce, and then just left them. No playing with his catch like a cat. Our present dog will chase them, but so far hasn't killed anything.

Yes, the RTs kill them quickly and want nothing to do with them when it is done. Good doggie.