I grow mine in pots as a temporary means until I am both satisfied with where I want them to live in the garden and also the soil where they will be planted is decent enough to not stall any progress they might be making. It sort of gives me a flexible buffer so I donâÂÂt feel pressured or rushed to get them in the ground. I also pot them up to allow me the opportunity to âÂÂbabyâ them, if need be. There is a down side to that though. Sometimes I fuss too much and I know if I just left them alone they would be fine. But, I am still so new to hostas that I feel like I would be a bad parent, throwing them straight out into the wild unknown that I call my front yard. I want to tame the jungle before I let the kids out to play. That sounds corny, but you get the point. :p I think the biggest perk though is when they are in pots I can take the whole plant and plunk it in the garden where I think I might like to place it permanently. Once I have a plant anchored I will then plan around it, and slowly the garden grows. I have tried to sit down and map out an entire bed, but I always end up more frustrated than satisfied. I need to SEE them and the other plants around it to know if itâÂÂs a good fit. Plus, I can leave them in the spot in the garden while still in the pot to test out sunlight and wind. If they end up blanching or breaking I know it might not be the best place for permanency. Ludi

I felt I needed to do something, so I trapped him in a tupperware, filled another container with water, took him outside near a field, poured the water into the tupperware to rinse him off a bit, then tipped him out of the tupperware. I left for a few minutes, then came back, and he'd had the presence of mind to scootch on over to hide under a shrub. I felt better seeing he'd done this, but next time, I'll go get lady bugs or some other non-chemical way of getting rid of the white flies. Oh, I did find out, s/he's a Pacific Treefrog, a bright green little fellow. Apparently it's not unheard of for them to take up residence in flower pots.

My grandmother used to take a potatoe, cut it in half and rub the wart with one half of it until it burned like fire. She would then bury both the potatoe halves in the ground somewhere (the person with the wart wasn't supposed to see or know where she buried it). In a few weeks the wart was supposed to disappear. I think my grandmother was a little wierd, you think? It didn't work on my sister. Witchcraft I say. She also believed that if you had a chest cold you boiled up some onions and put them in a poltice or cloth or something and put them on your chest while you lay in bed and the onions would draw out the poison or whatever. Witchcraft I say. Oh and if you got stung by a bee, she'd go get some dirt and make mud out of it by spitting on the mud and then putting the mud on the bee sting site and this would draw out the stinger as it dried. Witchcraft I say. Witchcraft.

Don't know really. A few years back I noticed Green Tree Frogs at my place were becoming more brown rather than green. I tried to find out why but ran into a 'blank wall'. Haven't seen them brown the last couple of years and there doesn't seem to have been any detrimental effect to the population. Haven't noticed changes in other species, other than the ones that are highly variable anyway. Most frogs seem to be able to adjust their colours to suit their surroundings to some extent, maybe that's what they've been doing.