I still love the deer, they are so beautiful, especially the babies. We put up a deer fence along the woods and now they leave me alone. It is heartbreaking to go out and find your hostas mowed down, been there. Sometimes they are so smart, they come in through our driveway. What I did notice is they only bothered the old solid green junk hostas. Couldn't figure out why, then I thought maybe because all of my good hostas and roses get the Bayer 2 in 1 applied every 6 weeks or so. Maybe something in that makes them taste bad.

Hi Deanna, welcome to the hosta forum. Hostas are not poisonous. Some people actually eat them, there are even recipes, believe it or not! I have three dogs and can attest to the fact that they are just fine after biting off a piece or two. I on the other hand am not fine with them eating any of my hostas! So plant your new hostas outside in your garden and enjoy them. If your dogs won't stay away from munching on your plants there are non-toxic sprays you can use to make the hostas less appetizing to them.

We're in contract The difference in NYC (over other places) is that the contract comes SO late. All the negotiating (cut in price to compensate for inspection issues, etc.) is done BEFORE the deal is enforceable. In other areas, those things are done to modify the original contract. But in other states, there is still a little bit of time where the circumstance you describe could happen. Verbal communication saying that "the contract will be signed," and then the signer changes his mind. i've seen many posts here about people who say, "we submitted our bid, and we heard they're accepting, but we don't have the signed contract yet." Often that could happen over the weekend even in another jurisdiction! The agent looks at the offers on Saturday, talks w/ the owners, notifies the buyers of the end result (not price, but yea/nay)--but the sellers aren't in the office to put their signature on the paper. So one of the buyers comes back w/ a lot more money early on Monday morning, and the sellers get told about it when they come in to sign the other contract. Not being idiots, they take the new offer. Sorry and all that, but this is business. And it's not like the disappointed seller has lost that much--it was just the WEEKEND. What, 48 hours at most, and one of them was a Sunday? She didn't pay for an inspection. She didn't pass up lots and lots of other homes because she thought she had this one. There weren't any *real* damages in the legal or financial sense. The process of buying an apartment (and don't say "for an apartment?" christopherh. They are the ONLY HOMES YOU CAN BUY in many neighborhoods of the city; we do not HAVE single family homes in many of our neighborhoods. Or if we do, they are three times the price of an apartment, or more--my apartment in such a neighborhood is supposedly worth $450k; a 3BR is worth $575k, and we're considered "affordable"), esp. in NYC where it is likely to be a co-op instead of a condo, is three months minimum, and usually at least a month between offer and signed contract. So the seller is disappointed, but she is not actually OUT anything. She was not at all damaged, except emotionally. As for damages, if a true contract is breached-- If you sue the seller for "specific performance," you can win. As long as there's not some contingency they can use to squeak out of it (and most contingencies are for the BUYER, not for the seller). You could perhaps use that threat to negotiate letting them out of the contract. You could say, "we will not sue you, if you will pay us the equivalent of OUR deposit, to compensate us for the time we lost trying to buy your house." *maybe* just *maybe* a judge wouldn't find in your favor, but I highly doubt it. If they didn't, you could prove damages in terms of the market going up, your inspection money, and the time you lost. HOWEVER, as you noted, in many instances, if a buyer has to back out bcs of an unpreventable disasters, a seller will refund the deposit out of a sense of karma. and likewise, buyers who see that the seller has had a disaster, will often agree to dissolve the contract out that same sense of karma. They may ask for the reimbursement of true monetary losses.

Like you, I've been reluctant to use slug bait. I spray 10% ammonia solution for slug control. You have to spray the slug directly so that involves getting into the garden early in the morning, during the night, or on a drizzly overcast day. (more fun than it sounds) For such a heavy infestation, it might also be a good idea to drench the soil around the plant with ammonia solution to kill the slug eggs. The holes on your plants are really quite large...cutworms or caterpillars might be the culprits. Hand-pick those? The slugs/worms have lots of hiding places in the plants surrounding your hosta...you might need to pull some of those out to clear the base.