Gopher escape

Earlier in the day I saw a huge hawk? eagle? circling over the pasture where the main gopher "town" is located. The wingspan was quite long, even when seeing the bird from the house. In the evening I found a small part of a gopher left in one of my traps. The bird ate well.

Also tonight I had a gopher caught in a conibear trap. It was still alive having just been caught. The trap caught it behind its head and near its rear. It didn't look to be going anywhere, and with most of its body in the trap I couldn't cleanly kill it. I decided to check the other traps then return, by then it would be dead. To my great surprise the trap was empty when I returned. No sign of the gopher. Instead of the trap quickly killing the gopher it somehow slipped out of the trap. This will be the last time I will be "nice" to a gopher. I have enough gophers, I don't need one to escape and then get wary of the trap.

The other "hayfield" gopher is still continuing with its "fill the hole with dirt" tricks. It is frustrating, but I'll get him eventually.

My garden is doing ...okay. All the tomato, pepper, broccoli, and cabbage plants survived the transplant from the house to outdoors. Ten of the twelve sunflowers made it. Two out of four cucumber plants are alive. Three of six pumpkin plants appear to be just alive. Two out of eight cantaloupe plants are still alive. It appears all eight watermelon plants died.

All the plants were healthy before the transplant. I don't know if they got too much sun, too much water, or not enough water.

My radishes, peas, corn, beans, most potatoes, some onions and beets are popping out of the ground. The carrots and lettuce haven't made their appearance yet. And of course, the weeds are starting to appear too.

I had planted some old flower seeds. No flowers yet.

I don't know, I don't think I have much of a green thumb this year.