This is a good year for cactus blooms. They got kicked around by spider mites last year, but, I think I got them under control and onto annihilating the little bastards. The reason I work at this... Prometheus

My entire neighborhood deals with families of woodchucks all the time. It is illegal to transport them from you property to another location in MA. It appears though, that the companies that trap them can also remove them. Problem with that though, is that you may have them removed from your property, but they are still around in your neighbors. The life cycle of the groundhog is to breed, and when the fall comes, their off spring move on to dig their own dens. Usually then move to another area from where they where born. So if you remove the groundhogs from your property and your neighbors have them, then the offspring from your neighbor will be happy to move right on to your property. Not only that, but the ones that live down the street, will be happy to come and forage on your plants and gardens. Besides the damage that the groundhog does to our gardens, they can be very dangerous to property as well. They dig their tunnels underground and if tree roots get in their way, they don't burrow around them, but rather chew through the roots. The tree may look healthy above ground, but it can have barely any roots holding it. A simple gust of wind, or soaking grounds from rain, will topple the tree over without anywarning. I've seen that happen far to many times. They burrow underground under sheds and topple the shed as well. Several years ago, a neighbor had 8 groundhogs removed from their property by a company and thought they where all set. Much to their dismay, and quite an expense to having them removed, they sat and watched the neighbors groundhogs move right into their property and they where back at square 1. If it isn't the groundhogs eating, it's the chipmunks, rabbits, squirrels and new this year for the first time in 29 years, DEER. The deer have had a field day on my hostas. It's a never ending battle with the 4 legged critters. Fran

I guess the problem is I never met a plant I didn't like. Maybe it's because the conditions in which some of them developed their own particular characteristics to cope, and even to thrive, are envisioned and appreciated. When I think of the relentless difficult desert conditions that cacti, agaves and succulents and that whole family of plants endure they become a metaphor of this world with lessons to teach as well as their own type of tenacious beauty to share. Cacti, like some of us, manage to survive and grow in the harshest of climates, and while prickly on the surface they strive in their own way to show us beauty in the design of those very prickles and thorns and in the graceful shapes of their forms. Their true colors and magnanimous inner softness emerge in spring, or whenever the conditions are not so harsh, as they open up their blossoms to display their sweetly scented nature that lives within, as if to say "Love us for what we are -- since we couldn't have survived otherwise -- and we will show you our inner loveliness as well."

Molly, speaking of paving stones, I have some areas in my yard 'paved' with mulch. It's on the sides of the house, in back of the store room, under the trees along the fence line, plus in all the flower beds and as a topping for plants in pots so they can be watered with the hose without the soil splashing out. In all these places it eventually disintegrates into compost and then I add some more on top. I've been lucky enough to catch the tree trimmers and ask them to dump their ground up limbs nearby in a vacant area where I can get it in a wheel barrow, but you could have some hauled in. I apply it pretty thick and no weeds have ever grown through it. It looks fine to me, like a forest floor, and doesn't need watering. I know you have to keep the grass in certain places, but in other places on your large property where you don't want grass or flower beds you could just mulch it. An interesting thing about the mulch where it was dumped in a long pile about a foot or two deep is that it's still moist from the rains we had weeks and weeks ago. So it really does preserve moisture if applied thick enough. I apply it about 5 or 6 inches deep and then settles down a bit. It burns up a lot of calories hauling that much stuff in a wheel barrow :-)