Ward my Wild Watermelon would probably be on the ground too except that one of the Penstemons and agastaches are underneath it and holding it up. At this point there isn't even enough room to weed that bed. I used to envy people who had full beds like this LOL! Now my neighbors are coming over here to see what I have that is growing like gangbusters. One neighbor told me she is going to have to pay me to water her plantz so they look like mine. I am not going to share with her because I don't want her to have any of my hummies LOL! Ward you are so right about forgetting in spring how big these plantz can get by mid to late summr. There seems to be SOOOO MUCH empty space between everything in early spring that you start filling in and still think you are going to have empty pockets and then all of a sudden you are looking for more empty brown space! This year I am not cutting anything back or pulling stuff out. I am going to leave the overgrowth as is all winter in hopes that it will provide some extra protection for my tender salvias. In the spring I tried to plant the B&B's closer to the house with the hardier agastaches and penstemons in front. Now maybe with the extra stuff around and in front it will help them survive...keeping my fingers crossed. Penny

-- Lois Banyai Butch, you can easily demonstrate in the lab symbiotic microbial growth in a matter of weeks under the lab controlled conditions of temp, moisture, pH and aeration. In the ground it may be three years by natural augmentation, but we can easily see (especially those active today in the mycorhizial application business) plant stress management in just a couple of weeks. Root dips are the most productive way - wetting with the active spores. The key is the right blend of active and needed natural bacilus, fungi and mycorhizial spores. Putting dead microbes/spores into the ground (the most common reason for getting no results) will not help. I have been asked if hosta need a special microbial blend and don't have an easy answer. We have seen great increases in hosta size/vigor with benefical bacteria/fungi treatments, comparable to what we see in trees and shrubs (our main landscaping markets). The hosta test programs have been quite limited as the market potential isn't that great (nut case hosta growers not withstanding!), since hosta can and will tolerate a wide range of conditions before they croak. Where the market opportunity may be is in improving potted plant transplanting (aka Ken Marek style) with the risks of loss being greater than the costs of not treating. Ken, superabsorbant polymers have many functions, but Butch is correct that once hydrated they do not like to give up their water. And the factor little understood is when the swollen gels began to dry out on the surface they form a hard shell which the root hairs can't penetrate. Not saying all a marketing gimmick but have to consider the quality and system formulation to gain best results. Bruce Bruce, Every study on the subject of microbial enhancement shows improved growth unless of course you reach some imbalance in organisms, yet they will find equilibrium on their own in a hurry. Sometimes that is not fast enough to save the plant. The main point is such things need to be studied as your company is doing and further they should be studied at university level; which they are. Usually advances come out of crops with greater economic value and can be used with something like hosta. A great deal of growing "knowledge" comes out of pot culture and doesn't translate easily to growing in the soil. How many people put perlite, vermiculite, water gels and even fertilizer into the soil for no value at all. Good luck with your work and of course finding something of value for pot culture would have great economic value. Butch

Y'all, Susan is a lot of fun and you can't hold it against her just because she's telling you the truth. LOL I know that we all grew up believing that robins are the first sign of spring, but that's just a myth. We have them here on our land probably 8 winters out of 10, and sometimes we have relatively small numbers and sometimes we have lots of them. They form very large flocks at times.....hundreds if not more. They go wherever they can find plants that have berries and fruits or seeds that they can eat once the earthworms have migrated deeper in the earth. I like to watch them splash and play in our creek where it apparently doesn't bother them that the water is cold and the air is not much warmer. How far north can robins survive the winter? They can take a lot of cold as long as they can find food. If they cannot find adequate food, they'll migrate further south until they find a good supply. It is believed that robins essentially fly far enough south most years to reach areas where the average temperature in winter is at least 36 degrees. I've heard of robins overwintering as far north as Minnesota some years, although I'd be a bit surprised if they are there right now. You can google and find migration maps of the robins, probably at Journey North, but it is likely that no reports of robin migration have been recorded yet this year. I enjoy the birds as much as anyone else and I watch them a lot, and I really haven't seen any of them migrating yet. I did look at the Purple Martin Scout Arrival Map yesterday, and birds are being reported in far south Texas and in parts of southern Florida.

Caroline, Some years we have a lot but other years we don't. This has been an outstanding year for them--perhaps the best year since we moved here in 1999. We have a neighbor (a wonderful, older lady whom we adore) a couple of miles south of us who has been feeding them for about 60 years and has tons and tons of feeders and tons of hummers like you're used to seeing in Colorado. She's the only person I know of here who can routinely count her hummers in the dozens, or maybe hundreds, daily. Carol, You know, I had wondered about that. USUALLY, by this point, a lot of hummers have already reached the Texas Coast. (Rockport had to cancel its' annual hummingbird festival scheduled for this coming weekend......I hope someone told the hummers so they could head back north!) We HAVE had some fronts coming down out of the north, and often hummers "ride the wave" of air that pushes down with a cold front--that's one way they increase their migration efficiency. So, while the recurring cold fronts could have carried a lot of them down, I think they are not in a hurry to go farther south. I've been in the kitchen a lot this week--baking goodies for DH to take to work for his overworked colleagues (having to staff and coordinate air evacuations and their emergency operations center in additional to routine police work). I have a feeder AND some hummingbird plants right outside the kitchen window, and I have had many, many birds to enjoy as I work there at the counter. I can tell when a lot of "strangers" are visiting because they (a) freak out when they look in the window and see me; ((b) get trapped on the screened-in porch when trying to take a shortcut from the feeder and plants on the south side of the house to those on the west side of the house; and (c) get trapped inside the 40' x 30' red barn....and I have to lure them out by hanging a feeder in a doorway, or they fly back and forth up near the high peaked roof until they literally drop to the floor in exhaustion. The "regulars" are familiar with the set-up of our place and tend to avoid (a) through (c). If, indeed, the birds are hanging around here in southern OK to avoid Ike, I'm proud of them for being so smart! I know that a Tropical Storm Wind Watch has been issued for the Dallas-Fort Worth area for Sat. morning through Sun. morning, so think the birds are better off here than there. Dawn