OMG, Stage Rat! You are sooo wrong! The camera may not lie, but the photographer may point that box whereever she chooses. Notice there isn't a 5 gallon bucket in the pictures? That because no matter where I point that camera, I have to stop and move another bucket out of the frame! LOL. Oh, and most of my seedlings were annuals which grow 5x faster than perennials -- that probably accounts for the disparity in the sizes of seedlings. However, you are also sooo right! Nothing would do last year but that I had to have Larkspur. I got some mixed colors in my very first trade, so instead of being happy, I realized I really needed electric blue Larkspur! LOL. (and I got it, later on, too!) AND you are also right about the over two feet thing, too. My beds look out of alignment because I don't have enough of the shorties. And I don't have enough of the shorties because I was so SICK of them! That's all you see at the garden centers, when you think about it. So, I went too far the other way. In fact, I think I was in a wishlist swap where I told people I didn't want anything shorter than 15" LOL! Luckily I had some petunias from swaps & trades and 100 miniature (bedding) Snapdragon seeds that ALL germinated from Nettasaura and Drippy. NEXT year I might get it right, but the reseeding sounds pretty good, too. I have little yellow birds perched on my Bachelor Buttons, isn't that funny? They perch on the stems and just eat-eat-eat -- all day long. Every once in a while you see the whole stems start to lean and that one flies off only to come back again and test its weight on the fallen stem. Now they have added the Liatrus, but I can't figure out why because they just started blooming and surely haven't had time to go to seed yet, even the first flowers. The chipmunks ate all the poppy seed, the squirrels won't let any of the sunflowers germinate and the Japanese Beetles have ruined every dahlia and coneflower. It's a veritable feast around here....guess I should have sown double what I did. ROTFLMAO because I would be dead if I had to plant even one more jug! I'm sorry to be missing your shindig this weekend but I will probably be going up to Chicago for a birthday party in Sept and could make a short stop for a cold one on the way up or back. I'll email you when I know the dates. Lime

I did the ultimate, had a tree service company come, remove a big maple and ground out the stump to 8 inch depth. There is still one maple to go. Then when I tried to do the border to the lawn I noticed that all the roots were still there. So I sharpened (several times) my heavy axe and cut all those roots down to 7 inches, heavy work. I agree that maples have a lot of surface roots, those fine roots are so dense and woven into the lawn. It is good to get rid of maples, one more to go! In respect to the electric cultivator per my recent experience, up to 10 ft close to a trunk those should be useless, might twist your arms off when that cultivator gets stuck in roots. Otherwise I would use spinout bags. I noticed when digging holes for those bags that a post hole digger is useful, because its heavy and sharp blade cuts through roots, otherwise use an axe and long-handle pruners. Such work is good exercise, a beer helps afterwards. Bernd This post was edited by berndnyz5 on Tue, Oct 15, 13 at 10:16

We're in Atlanta, GA and we've been in a 100-year DROUGHT. So, everyone envy us now. All our lawns and dogwood trees are dying because of the outdoor watering restrictions. Oh, and all-time record breaking temperatures went with that, just ended. 28 days of daytime highs above 90 (the average high for that period is 88 here). We were high and dry. But the rain has started now. Normal pattern. And we're getting close to breaking ground--wouldn't you know! So our expectations are for a slower build than we would've had when we were high and dry. Interesting factoid: due to the increased shipping demand by all retailers in the fall season leading up to Christmas, it's always slower getting building supplies from Sept. through Dec. Again, something for us to remember since we'll be starting in the fall. Many factors affect all our builds and then there's the factors unique to each of our builds. Perhaps its an opportunity to work on our patience skills, since we basically have no choice but to wait. We have so much to do ourselves that I don't know why we waste any energy fretting--which we do. We need to: Start making needed repairs on our existing house to get it ready to sell. Clean out our existing attic, garage, shed, closets. Decide where in the new house the remaining stuff is going to go and make a note of that so the move-in doesn't kill us. Start packing the stuff we never use and insist on moving anyway. Finish selecting, and re-selecting (for cost-reduction) some things like plumbing fixtures, light fixtures, electrical gadgetry, etc. All requiring lots of research/shopping. Finish up placing our existing furniture on the floorplan; decide what to discard. Try to find an antiques dealer to sell the china cabinet and grandmother's china. Start shopping sales on closet fixtures, window treatments, occasional chairs, fabrics and stuffing to make new throw pillows. Why are we (DH and I) fretting when we should be working???!!! And are we the only freaks who still have all this to put our energy into? I know that for me it's easier to focus on how slow those OTHER people are going than on all the things I need to be doing.

Fly, Jane's been doing the "populist" thing for quite some time now. She handed over day-to-day control of the research at Gombe a long time ago and started working the public and the politicians. I worked for her about 10 years ago for a while and she never spent more than a few days in any one location (aside from a couple of weeks at Gombe and a couple of weeks in England with her mother here and there) - - she constantly traveled the world trying to spread her messages of conservation, animal rights and public service. I don't know if she is still keeping up that strenuous schedule but I wouldn't doubt it. Lena and others: I agree that Steve was more effective at reaching the masses, and this was largely because of the thrill of watching him in dangerous situations. However, I'm not convinced of the relative benefits of his educational message. OK, so he convinced people in their living rooms around the world that crocodiles should not be eradicated. But does it matter a whole lot whether someone in Ohio believes that? Isn't it more important to make a local impact in that respect? I know, he did that as well (at least with respect to crocodiles), but IMO he could have done so without jumping all over them on t.v. just for the showmanship of it. In the beginning, didn't his show focus on actually being sent out to catch and relocate dangerous animals? Now that I can understand, because he's actually benefitting the animal in the end. But catching them just to show off for cameras reflects a certain lack of respect for the animal IMO. For me, it's a question of quality over quantity. He may have reached more people, but I don't think the message he carried had the anywhere near the level of respect for the natural world that other naturalists are actively trying to cultivate. Furthermore, adding a "do as I say, not as I do" caveat to his exploits did not, IMO, counteract the implicit message that tough guys mess with dangerous animals. If you've ever been to Yellowstone or somewhere like it, you saw that there was always one (or more) in a crowd who had to push the limits, getting foolishly close to the animals. This put the animal in a bad situation as well as the other observers. While people did this before Steve's show came out, I doubt it could be said that his actions did anything to discourage this type of behavior.