Luckily I've never found a human bone. But a friend of Curts did, he didn't know it and had it on his mantle, another friend pointed out it was a human leg bone & they called the police. Turns out it belonged to YET ANOTHER friend that had been missing and was murdered!! What are the odds? He was so freaked out he didn't go beachcombing for about a year after that and says he still won't look at driftwood piles, that's where he found the bone. I hang all the shoes I find on the "wall of lost soles", the wooden fence at our house. The wall even made it on TV! I found a message in a bottle, for those of you concerned with OCEAN CURRENTS you can look up the article at the Galveston County Daily news and see exactly WHICH currents it drifted in on, the path it took and the length of time, and a great picture of ME! I made the front page. It was shocking to pull up to the papermachine and see myself staring back out. It was dropped off a teaching ship by a guy who has been dropping messages in a bottle off boats & ships since he was a kid. The garden lost about 80% of it's plants in Ike. Things I took down to save from blowing away drowned. We had waist deep water for 2 days, we think, there was no water in the house but roof damage from the wind. Of course, the roofers did much worse damage when they set the house on fire. The neighbors house is 11" shorter than ours & she had 10" of water. She might actually get to move home in 2 weeks. My brother had his house elevated, the wiring and plumbing, siding, floors have been done, they are working on the inside and front steps now, hopefully they will be home just after the new year. I know they, like a lot of others, are tired of living in a travel trailer. We sent mom to my sisters while her house was being done. She had to have her staples removed from surgery while we were evacuated and then we couldn't find her doctor. My bro-in-law is an MD & my sister doesn't work outside the home so it worked out well. She had 2-4' of water in her house. My Aunt is moving home next week, she had water to the roofline. My cousin has her downstairs gutted but still waiting to start work. A lot of our neighbors moved, my cousin is the only one for 2 blocks in her neighborhood and only about 1/4 of my brother neighbors are back. There are houses for sale everywhere. We thought the Pride of Barbados to be dead, it sort of came back last year but didn't look good through winter, I was really surprised when it started to bloom a few weeks ago. It's only a few feet high, it was over 12' before the storm. The city ripped the yellow one out of the ground while we were all exiled. They grow really easy from seeds if you find someone with seeds. Tally HO!

Hi Stoloniferous, congrats on your new house and the new baby on the way! It sounds like a beautiful property. I too, share your passion for native plants. I don't have any of the "poisons" on my lot, because it is former farmland and they have not colonized here, but had plenty of poison ivy at my previous house. I've gotten my share of rashes over the years! Frankly, if I had poison ivy or poison sumac, which are both native and wildlife-friendly, I would be hesitant to eradicate them too, especially in the wilder areas. They can act as a wonderful deterrant from people wandering onto your property! :-p Is there any way you can consider keeping your Poison sumac patch and either fencing or growing shrubbery and garden beds around it to make it difficult to get to? I can't imagine that your baby will be toddling around back there anytime soon, and you can also teach the child to stay away from certain plants. There are LOTS of other poisonous plants that people grow in yards and gardens, it's hard to avoid all of them. My yard was infested with woody invasives when I moved here 5 years ago - although I have no wet area. I have been involved in a intensive effort to remove Acer platanoides (Norway maple), Celastrus orbiculatus (Oriental Bittersweet), Frangula alnus (Glossy buckthorn), etc. for several years now. I use a bow saw and Triclopyr concentrate (Brush-B-gone) in a squeeze bottle. Crawl around, cut stem, apply small amount of herbicide on stem only. Cut, apply herbicide. Sweat, drop pruning shears, get stung by yellow jackets, crawl around, cut, apply herbicide. I also purchased a Weed Wrench which has become an invaluable tool for pulling out small trees and shrubs. Because your Poison sumac is in a wet area, you must use extra planning and caution. Most of these herbicides or the surfactants they use are highly toxic in water. If this area is accessible to heavy machinery, perhaps you could have someone with a back hoe pull them out? Just my rambling thoughts...

Julie, Sorry I haven't been back on here for several days, had company and various things come up. I hope you find this message. I think the DE that I buy at Atwoods is food grade, I do not currently have a bag, so I can't tell you for certain. I picked up a bag at horn seed co last summer I'm going to use now, that it is not food grade-for the yard only. Now, I remember a couple of years ago a discussion on here and someone said that their holistic vet said that DE was very drying on a "dogs" coat, some ppl said they had that problem, some hadn't. I applied some to my dogs coat last summer for the first time, and I did find that it dried their skin and caused it to be flaky, like it sometimes is after a bath, but no worse than that. If I try it this year, I'm going to go with an extremely LIGHT dusting of DE and see if that prevents the problem. For your cat you can use Neem shampoo for the fleas, it is all natural and it is actually sold in pill form as a supplement, that a lot of ppl like use. Neem is one of those miraculous plants, that has many benefits and uses. I have used it on 4 week old baby kittens that were infested with fleas, it kills fleas on contact and did not harm the kittens, just do not get it in the eyes. When we got our Boston Terrier puppy she had a poor immune system and ended up with puppy mange, and with every trip to the vet it was getting worse and worse, I finally realized all the chemical meds and pesticides were taking a toll on her immune system and thats when I found a holistic pet med site that I ordered a "kit" for her specific problem. The kit was more expensive than buying the herbs myself from the health food store,but worth it within 2 days problem solved- after months and months of vet trips and hundreds of $. After the kit was gone, I knew it would work so I just started the herbs from health food store. I also have a book of holistic remedies by Dr. Martin Zucker, that has been so incredibly helpful, I recommend it to every pet owner. I wish ppl knew the value and usefulness of herbal/holistic remedies vs. other measures. Mine is specific for dogs, but I think he was out for cats also. One more thing on the fleas, the neem also comes in an oil form, but I found the odor of it to be unpleasant, so I used to get the pill form, open the capsules and sprinkle the neem leaves into a small quantity of water, cover it and let it soak overnight, then I would take a cotton ball and dab it onto my dogs coat, just to give them some added protection in between baths, you could probably use a spray bottle if you could filter the neem leaves out. good luck! and sorry so long. Dawn, well that map reads 493 for us so......not looking to good here. We did get some moisture last night, but rainfall map indicated it wasn't much, since midnight anyway, didn't look at the other map to see how much before midnight. It seems like the Keetch Byram index might be the most accurate and make the most sense to consider. I was a little late in getting most of tomato plants in, and I know I'm not making it 3-4 days in between waterings. top 1 inch seems to be drying out much faster, and with sudden death of 90% of my tomato plants last year, I'm hitting the water pretty hard. Thanks for the link to the scale! I'm going to be watching it this summer.

I don't know where you're located, but if you can get to Blue Moon Gardens in Chandler, they usually have sweet olives. (I'd call in advance if you're traveling, although the nursery is worth the trip if you're anywhere in north Texas.) You can also see (smell?) their full-size one that's planted on the north side of one of their buildings.