Relocating animals can cause a long and painful death and create other problems. Animals don't immediately show symptoms of diseases they are infected by. You can move an animal today that will be obviously sick two days later. If you've done that you've increased the odds of spreading disease. Healthy animals might now be exposed to disease they needn't have been exposed to. Territory wars can be mean and nasty. If you've never seen rabbits fight it might be hard to picture. They have sharp nails and teeth and inflict a lot of damage. An animal that can't establish its own territory struggles to find food and shelter. Without food and shelter they'll die of exposure and/or starvation. Death by efficient bullet or shotgun shell is much more merciful than a long, painful death. There are other complications. I live just out of sight of a side road. They stop on the side road to empty, or leave, their live traps. Since people can't see me I must not be there, right? Wrong. Just because you don't see someone doesn't mean you aren't pawning your problem off on someone else. We've shot more raccoons and skunks than I like to remember. Did they do anything? Yes and no. They did what they do naturally - rip heads and wings off my chickens, ducks and turkeys, raid nests and kill unhatched birds, and expose my dogs and cats to disease. What they do is natural but it's not ok. The poor little bunny was treated humanely. It could have had a much crueler, less humane, prolonged death.

Thanks, that hosta bed looks very lush and full this year and the toad lillies are twice the size they were last year! For shade, the new trees (Serviceberry and Crabapple) are in the bed with the hosta and across the path is a Weeping Cherry (pretty good spread on it). I know it will be a while before the two new trees can take over the Japanese Maple's shade duties! BTW, the view is looking west towards the edge of a wooded portion of my lot (I was standing between the house and the hosta bed) - so shade in the early AM from the shadow of the house until about 10:30, then sun until 2 pm when the tall trees to the west cast their shadow. I am fully expecting to have them get sunburned - unless the tomato plants and Sweet Autumn Clematis vines (just starting to grow up the old tree trunk) get growing quickly! I just have to be patient and trust that the shade plants won't die before the new trees get big enough to do the job. BettyLu

I waited for those with more knowledge on the subject of plant-specific fertilizers to respond. But, instead David has given you the excellent advice of using a good quality compost. Matoad, you may be looking for experience & info on Shultz, Osmocote, or Peters or some other but I don't really have that. Certainly, I can't think how something like bone meal could harm anything. It will break down slowly and improve soil tilth because of that. Despite my organic veggie gardening, I use Miracle-Gro in the flowers every year. I just see it as having a broader benefit than the 16-16-16 which goes in the beds during the Spring. Plants need different nutrients to grow and bloom and not all of those nutrients will be found in your garden soil. Which ones are lacking can only be determined by a soil test. However, mostly your plants need chlorophyll, sunlight, fresh air, and water since most of the plant ends up as carbohydrates arranged in appropriate ways. Certain nutrients can't be ignored and some required in only minute amounts may be lacking. What to do, what to do?? I find organic fertilizers make infinite sense in the veggie garden partly because they have that broad range of nutrients in their plant & animal (rather than just mineral) origins. Now that these organic fertilizers are leaving the $1/pound price range behind, I'm concerned but will continue to go that route. I'll continue buying in bulk and thereby avoid this $2/pound rate that we are heading rapidly towards. Composted manure is the cheapest route to go but good quality has really gone out the window in my area. I would need to supplement manure with fertilizer anyway. I'll continue to use Whitney Farms and forgo the manure except in my own compost pile. The organic fertilizer is for the veggie garden. Most of the compost, however, is for the flower garden. Mostly, that is a result of where the bins are located. Maybe more importantly, is how little compost I can make out of plant wastes, kitchen parings, and a load of cow manure each year. May as well put it ALL in the dahlias, Sweet Wills, and Canterbury bells and not spread it ridiculously thin, hell-to-breakfast. For all the flowers, I'm continuing to use the 16-16-16 followed with 2 or 3 applications of Miracle-gro before blooming. digitS'

I think the room arrangement looks nice, but is this to scale? Do you have the right amount of space around the furniture? As drawn, I don't think it all fits, but that might be an artifact of the sketching rather than the reality of the space. If you don't want to use a computer program, graph paper works really well! You can get 2'x3' sheets at an art or drafting store. Draw all the permanent walls on the background sheet. Use another sheet to make paper dolls--um--furniture, counters and appliances, plus thick, colored lines for new walls, that you can cut out. Use a repositionable glue stick, or just a tiny dab of regular glue stick, to put them on the background page. That way you can put them at nice angles, and the space you need between the appliances and cabinets, for instance, gives you the wiggle room you need. It also lets you easily see and adjust the amount of space between chairs and tables, etc.