Wow - Willow what a great price for Vermiculite! And I've been buying the skimpy bags at the garden centers for the same price. Thanx for the tip! I love all my fresh compost too - Yesterday I turned 2 big piles and started a new one. The last 2 I dug in and spread around was a marvelous experience! I bet a health study would show positive benefit form inhaling fresh compost aroma. Preparing soil today - for planting my *first-ever* FOUR Dahlia beds - with Tubers sent by Poochella! This is so exciting. Quite a few are showing sprouts already - so I'm really eager to get 'em in the ground. I'm mixing soft crumbly peat (NO gukky clumps) into mixed sterile steer compost today - that looks and feels really good: dark with light texture, so I couldn't resist mulching a bunch of transplants with it - so i needed to make even more. Then will dig that in this week - to new lasagna beds that were turned under in last few weeks, after having been covered with cardboard, coffee-grounds & mounded leaves all winter. The lasagna soil gets broken up to a crumbly state, then a spade of fresh home-made compost goes in - with the steer-peat mix for each wide planting hole - mixed well into the origional average dirt that formerly hosted grass. Then planting time - will be irresistable - Should I wait for planting till I buy more Perlite - (or that vermiculite) or is the 1/3 peat, 1/3 dirt, with the 2 kinds of compost mix good enough to keep soil both light and free from baking/compacting in summer? I'm leaning toward adding perlite or vermiculite first - so tubers can form more easily for sharing. (In Oregon it gets VERY wet sometimes, and also so HOT that the ground can bake into near concrete...) Besides STAKES, Can you think of anything else that should be added for better bloom, stronger stems, disease resistance, etc? For Powdery Mildew prevention - I am considering using an early Comfrey foliar spray. And I've realized realize I've got borage in the garden - not comfrey - and I bet that would work *equally* well - but to my knowledge has not been thru the formal studies. Any opinion/experience? I'm SO ready to go on this! I sorted alot of tubers into groups today and added the individual markers to each set so none get lost once planted. I plan to add groups if some mystery glads, Lucifer Crocosmia, and Canary Yellow Crocosmia (also from Poochella), with Liatris (the spiky Purple GayFeather) to the beds for foliage contrast, near existing Roses and Peonies that have nice bronzy leaves. I expect to remove lower leaves from most Dahlias - and I don't really want their bare legs to show. So on borders I'll also plant some smaller flowers and add contrasting foliage plants. Who needs grass in the Front yard anyway?! Mine will be reduced nearly to just a wide path for flower-bed access. I'm mulling how to best do the watering - I think by hand, slow with an aerating wand on the hose, so I can watch everything develop and spot weeds before they compete. Another quick question - I have a free source for Hemlock Bark Dust, that I'm thinking of using it in front just as an edge between grass and the Flowers. Is this OK? I assume Hemlock is too acidic to use more widely as mulch. In back it's being used just for soft walking paths in full sun areas where grass does not do well and only weeds (and my cookng Amaranth) tend to flourish. I look forward to finished planting, & seeing pix of everyone's gardens! Thanx so much for sharing info - I've learned alot already.

***Update*** OK, so the aforementioned garden center owners bought all of the critter cages I had on hand. They seemed excited, and pleased with the cages' construction. Purchase vs. consignment was discussed-- neither she nor I had any real preference. I think she just paid me for them outright because she needed some for her own use in their display gardens. But, it was my understanding that future critter cage orders, be it purchase or consignment, would be sold to customers without a markup. My guess is that they believe they will sell more plants if they have some sort of critter protection to offer to wary customers. They sell something like 200+ varieties of hostas...... and we all know how much voles love them. No idea yet on how well they are selling. It's still a bit early in our gardening season-- Apr 15 is our "safe" planting date. If I ever get another order for more cages, I think I'll need to attach some sort of pre-printed tag. Something with the product name, price, the garden center's info, and maybe a slogan. The only name I can think to call them is "anti-critter planting cage", which seems like a mouthful. The only slogan I could come up with was something along the lines of "Protect your plants, time, and sanity". Any ideas? I know there are some creative people out there who would like to channel their inner Don Draper. Despite this first sale, I'm still on the fence about the whole endeavor. Just for sh**s and giggles, I contacted one of the local farmer's markets that was recommended to me. The manager liked the critter cage idea and thought they would "dovetail" with their other vendors. She said their M.O. is to provide organic/sustainable/Eco-minded local farmers and businesses a place to sell their goods. She also said they have a few veggie and garden plant vendors, as well as a bulb grower. It sounded promising, so I looked up some photos of the market online. A lot of their vendors look like super-serious operations. Tents, signage, huge displays, staff, logo-ed packaging....... it's all very intimidating. Anybody out there with farmer's market experience? If it's anything like holding a garage sale, I'm *out*. To quote "Mythbusters", this starting to feel like a bad idea. But I'm still oddly drawn to it. Dear Hubby hasn't been much help-- he's been trained to temper his opinions:) Please help me make an informed decision. I promise I won't keep pestering you all.

Happy April Fool's Day everyone. Hugs to everyone who needs them. We got here on Saturday & got everything unloaded Sunday. We got the truck taken back on Monday. I still have a few things to put up but for the most part, everything is in its place. It looks really nice. Here is the sad news. We took our furbabies to the vet yesterday. The oldest one, Lucy, has heartworms. We have to take her back on Monday to have them staged. We have had her a week today & have already had to pay out the wazoo for her. We love both the little ones. Just trying to figure out how we are going to afford the treatment. It is very, very sad & I wish I could say that this was an April Fool's joke but it isn't. Besh~I know how you feel. Dave tells everyone that it took us 10 years to even be able to consider having another dog after we had to give ours up when we moved to Florida. We were still crying every time we said their names. These 2 little ones have already brought us so much joy. If you or RAEANNE could let me know the best thing to pick up hair, I would appreciate it. Papillons are not supposed to shed but IDK if it is b/c of stress or b/c they weren't groomed properly or petted enough, they are shedding. Not as much now as they were a week ago!!! I cannot tell you how far they have come in a week. I'm so glad that Maddie got to do Rabbit, Rabbit. LOL I got Dave this morning. He has been winning a lot lately. I am thinking about all of you & I wish I had been able to write down what each of you said so I could comment but I have the computer on my bed right now & 2 dogs & a snoring husband in a pear tree! LOL I hope that all the MIAs will come out & play. Did we ever find out what happened with John? I miss him. He snagged himself a GF & doesn't have time for us anymore, right? It is supposed to be in the 90s here this weekend so our 4 year old granddaughter is playing 2 soccer games tomorrow & we are going to watch them. Hope everyone else enjoys their weekend. I will make the ultimate sacrifice & get a sunburn for everyone if you want me to. ;)

I have a Miele with the third rack at the top for cutlery - and love it. It took some training of the family, but they are finally starting to get it. It also took a little getting used to on my part as far the sequence when I am loading - at first, I had to keep switching racks, going back and forth, but I think that was a little bit of a learning curve that you would have with any new appliance. As far as being fussy about loading the cutlery, it does take a moment extra, but if you load your stuff in zones - all the small forks together, all the knives, etc... it makes emptying the diswasher a breeze!!