I could agree and believe the OP as soon as I read it. A search for honey bee damage brought me to this forum. Two years ago my neighbor decided to become a bee keeper, and appears to be as commercial as he can get away with. I had harvested my fig tree for 8 yearsm but last year, the figs were totally destroyed by his bees. Before they were at the stage that I would pick them, they would have bees feeding off of them. The state of Florida has recently turned bee keepers into royalty by overriding any local concordances, and letting them pretty much do as they please. I tried many things last year, as I did not want to kill them. Next I will complain to the department of agriculture who supposedly regulates them, but I have had enough, and this year the pesticide will come out. If anyone knows of any groups that one could join to complain in Florida, or who wants to start one, please post up.

I grow many of the older Austins. In fact, I find myself to have an affinity with, if not a prefernce for some of the earlier English roses. My rose garden is just starting to bloom in the past two days. Many of the earliest blooming roses are the older English roses. The reds seem to be all opening, including; The Squire, Prospero, Wenlock, William Shakespear (Original) and William Shakespear 2000. Here are some images of some of the older English roses I grow and love: [IMG]http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/rideauroselad/Roses07/DSCF0031.jpg[/IMG] English Garden is vigorous healthy and has good rebloom in my garden. [IMG]http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/rideauroselad/Roses07/DSCF0030-2.jpg[/IMG] A close up of a bloom of English Garden. [IMG]http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/rideauroselad/Roses07/P6160049.jpg[/IMG] Pegasus is gorgeous, fragrant, healthy and prolific in my garden. My two plants are covered in buds and opening now. Less of an old rose character and more musk like though with large blooms. [IMG]http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/rideauroselad/Roses07/SUMMER015.jpg[/IMG] The Squire, a bit fussy, I grow him in a pot. But when he blooms, he's worth the trouble, 5 inch dark crimson blooms that take your breath away. [IMG]http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/rideauroselad/Roses07/P6160050.jpg[/IMG] The Pilgrim, powerful Tea Rose fragrance, intricate old fashioned flowers, the most gorgeous yellow flowers and healthy to boot. There are more, but one mustn't go on too long. Cheers, Rideau Rose Lad

Thank you Pat, my garden is very small so is difficult to rotate the crops, instead I kind of rotate the soil. In the same space that I grew pole beans before I grow the peas after but in one gallon pots with new soil, either store bought or mixed by me, whatever I have available at that moment. This is my third pea crop, I succession plant them to last me for a longer season. I don't keep a garden calendar so I don't remember when they were planted. Today I harvested the second crop of delicious carrots, red outside and pink inside, my family asked me to only plant this kind.:) I still have more carrot harvest coming up in another bed. The carrots were shredded, some to be used in recipes for us and some for our pets, the rest goes in the freezer. Silvia

We were active members of the local society when we had a local society. Some of the above post have started to nibble at the edges of the real issues. 1. Distance. There are limits to how far people will go to attend a meeting. Most of our regular attendees traveled less than half an hour to the meetings. The farthest among them traveled about 45 minutes. While some people may happily travel longer, it is a very real constraint. 2. Time of meetings. Every group I've been involved in has been torn in half between two very basic points of view. Older, retired people often dislike driving at night, and prefer holding meetings weekend afternoons. Younger, working people dislike having meetings during their prime gardening hours and prefer holding meetings weekday evenings. 3. Programming. This was our biggest issue. There really aren't that many speakers/programs with the breadth of experience to give a totally new program every year. It isn't easy to come up with interesting enough programs once a month, almost every month, year after year. This is the one area the ARS really let us down. Because of our size, we were very dependent on outside material. At that point, they had about 3 canned programs on hardy roses, and that was it. It was equally hard to get appropriate newsletter material from outside. If you are far enough north that you can pretty much cut and paste standard HT culture articles, this isn't going to be an issue. If you feel the standard articles need a lot of editing to be accurate, then you are going to be in our position where everything has to be created by your society, and that is a lot of work. 4. Participation. 'Many hands make light work' is true. None of this is a problem if you have enough people willing to help. If you can get 12 people to each contribute a newsletter article once a year, that's an original article every month, with nobody doing a lot of work. However, you have to ask a lot of people to get those 12. The same is true for every other society job. Someone may be willing to be President for a year or two, but quits in a huff after ten years because they have been pushed too far. Notice I haven't said anything about shows. Within fairly reasonable guidelines, shows can be what the local society wants them to be. We had shows where the Dowager and Modern Shrub classes had more entries and more exhibitors than Exhibition HT. If we had continued on, we were seriously considering creating our own Shrub certificates because we needed a Shrub court.