I live in the Hudson Valley of NY and thanks to a little nudge from my daughter in law, we started our own Victory Garden. You see my son is a US Marine and is overseas right now. His wife is staying with us and thought it would be nice to have a garden that celebrated my son's service to America. Hence a "Victory Garden". Our garden is 32ft x 32ft and we hope to keep it as organic as possible. We spent most of today tranplanting seedlings to the garden that we had started indoors. The piece of yard we decided to use for the garden proved to be a challenge. It was overgrown with wild roses and all kinds of weeds and rocks. It took us about 4 weekends to get it ready for planting. You can see a you tube slide show of our progress to date by clicking the attached link. Here is a link that might be useful: The Ramaglia's victory garden

You guys demonstrate my theory that cottonmouths are "passive-aggressive." Dangerous in that they don't move out of the path, often, and people who are not alert can step on them. Tales of them chasing people are usually highly exaggerated. This isn't to say it can't happen. Just that it's not a common behavior. My best cottonmouth story involved canoeing by myself on Rock Springs Run. I was in an area we call the Flats. Very shallow water, with a lot of grassy vegetation. Makes for slow canoeing as you try to glide through without digging up the bottom. I spotted a cottonmouth in the water, about 2 1/2 feet long, and close to the shore. It had a dead fish in its mouth. I don't think it killed the fish, but I can't be sure of that. But the fish looked REAL dead. It was a panfish of some type (bluegill, shellcracker, one of those) and quite wide, and this snake was trying its best to figure out how to swallow it. The snake worked its mouth slowly around the body of the fish, which was way, WAY too wide for it to swallow, and even tried to force it down sideways. The fish was probably ten inches long and no way was that snake going to get it down sideways. I let the canoe drift over fairly close, as I was enjoying the show. The snake finally began working its way towards the head of the fish, where it would have had the best chance to get it down, but suddenly noticed me or my canoe slowly nearing. If snakes could change expression, this one's eyes would have bugged out and his mouth would have dropped open. If they could talk, he would have been yelling "Holy Sheepdip! Where'd THAT come from??" He did a backflip away from the fish and took off for the weeds like a streak! It was so funny looking, I almost fell out of my canoe laughing at him. I always wondered if he came back later to finish working on the fish. But I didn't wonder about who was more scared by our encounter. He definitely was! Still...I am very careful on the river or in places where cottonmouths might lurk. They normally don't care if you approach them. I admire them, but I don't want to step on one or come face to face with one at any closer range than what I just described. I'm not NEARLY as brave as Wayne! Marcia

It could be the small green caterpillars. Usually if caterpillars are eating the leaves, you'll find green or black frass (excrement) lying on some of the leaves or on the ground beneath the plant. However, there are many other critters that will eat sunflower foliage, ranging from grasshoppers to deer. With caterpillars, you can hand-pick them and drop them into a bowl of soapy water to drown. You can do this wearing gloves if the thought of touching caterpillars with your bare hands grosses you out. You can protect the plants by spraying them with a pesticide labeled for use as a caterpillar control. If I was going to do that, I'd use an organic product containing the active ingredient Bacillus thuringiensis 'kustaki', which is a bacteria that only targets members of the Lepidoptera family. Understand, though, that the Bt 'kurstaki' also can kill the beautiful butterflies and moths that visit your garden, so if you choose to use it, try to spray it only on the green leaves and stems but not on the blooms themselves. There are many products on the market that contain Bt 'kurstaki' and I'll link an image of the container of one of the brands I see most often in stores. You usually can find these products in nurseries, garden centers, building supply stores, etc. I usually see them on the shelves of all kinds of stores like Wal-Mart, Lowe's, Home Depot, Tractor Supply Company, etc. in spring and summer. It sometimes can be hard to find in fall as it will sell out if there is a large outbreak of fall army worms or tent caterpillars, but even then you usually can order it online from someone like Amazon and get it pretty quickly. I rarely use this product because I like having a garden full of butterflies and moths, so my preference is to hand-pick the caterpillars instead of spraying the plants, but if hand-picking doesn't appeal to you, this is the option that would do the least harm to beneficial insects. This is not a quick-kill product. If you were to spray it directly on a caterpillar, the cat isn't going to just drop dead. The way that it kills them is that the caterpillars ingest the Bt while feeding on plants sprayed with it. Shortly thereafter they will stop eating, but they may live for 1-2 days longer before they die. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Example of 1 kind of a caterpillar killer product

You gave your girl a wonderful last day, and you gave yourself a gift, too: You stopped your busy routine and put yourself "in the moment" to just BE with her. Those were the moments I really loved when I had my puppy girl. Just being together on a walk, or lounging next to each other. Your photos are terrific, and one day soon you will be able to frame them (not that you'll ever be able to hold back the tears when you look at them, but that's just what great pets do to us, isn't it...). My deepest sympathies to your whole family. You had a beautiful girl there.