Well, my H-19 Littleleafs have slowed down drastically as I mentioned before, and now many new female blossoms are failing to set fruit. It is still slowly being overcome by what appears to be some kind of mildew -- it doesn't look like powdery mildew which I'm familiar with, so maybe downy mildew. I have been clipping leaves off as they become useless rather than clipping off all affected leaves which woul basically defoliate all the vines. (I realize this would not solve the problem and the vines will remain infected, but it's the best I can do since I can't count on rapid foliar growth to replace the lost leaves....)
Another threat to the vine emerged -- one of our cats likes to lay on the FiOS box on the low bookshelf to the right of the plant and, to get to it, she jumps up from the windowsill. I found some new vine tips and side shoots wilting from being broken off -- I'm supposing she didn't quite make the jump and fell or was lazy and climbed on the tomato cage.

LAST STRAW

was suspected since last fruit harvested had a tiny hole in it and DD discovered a caterpillar next to the harvested fruit on the counter -- she dispatched it without showing me.
-- Last night I noticed that the smaller of the two fruits that are next in line to be harvested (but hadn't been growing bigger at the same ratw as the other one) had what sppeared to be a bright lime green chewed up cucumber mash on its side. When I touched the fruit to examine it, it felt "hollow".
I examined it more closely this morning and it fell off in my hand -- it had a hole in the stem end:

- Hole in stem end of "hollow" cuke fruit
I cut it open and found this mess and a larva

- Pickleworm?
The thing is, I have never seen one of these in any cucumber I grew before. Is this a pickleworm? ...or maybe a melonworm?