Kim, There was a big package of seeds waiting for me when I got back into town today!!! I was out of town for a few days so I'm not sure what day it came, but WOW! I can hardly believe all of the wonderful seeds that I received. I've been looking through them and there are lot of things that I wanted and some that I didn't know that I wanted (but I want them now that I see them.) For example, I received Mexican Sage 'Limelight' for my blue and green garden. It has blue flowers with lime green calyxes. How cool is that!! So thank you everyone for sending in so many great seeds. I'm thrilled with what I got back! And a special thank you to our hostess. When I was putting together seeds to send in for this swap, I kept thinking how much work this swap would be to host. Honestly, Kim, I don't know how you did it. My brain would have turned to mush trying to keep all of those themes straight. You did an amazing job! Penny

Thanks everyone for the pick-me-up about sis, it is appreciated more than you will ever know. Welcome auntibirrd! So nice to have you are with us. Dawn is such a sweet,generous,and caring person. Please keep us informed about Dawn and baby Schoedel. We got around 11 inches of snow so I just returned home from going to work Thursday night. They didn't plow out the drive way and I was up to my axels in snow. The maintance crew finally got my car out this morning.This is a new home, and go figure, they didn't have a snow shovel in any of the apartments. There is just no place like home, being in warm pjs on a cold day. I'm off now till Monday night at 11pm, I work 12 hrs then off again till Friday night. I'm going to take this time to get out my decorations and at least look at them. I collect them every year from home-made, hallmark, Old World Chrismas and etc. I don't know if I will put up all 6 trees but I do know I will put up at least one. With my brood of cats it is real hard to keep them out of the trees, and they do play havic on the decorations. LIFE IS GOOD, Annie

hello well I'm fully into getting ready to move(funny we have not evan listed the house or looked at a new one yet) but I'm going throug 10 years of accumulated stuff and getting rid of much of it. my aim is to get most unnessasary stuff packed and put in storage before we evan list the house. I still need to do some painting and lots of rilly good cleaning. wow I would love to have a house with 3 acres, but we are looking to move to Missouri, about 20 to 30 miles from here, I would like to be much closer to my in-laws farm so I can do much of my gardening there(180 acres should be enough to keep me buisy for a few years) idealy I would like to build a house at the farm but it is over a mile to the nearest house, and I'm not sure I want to be so isolated. well I can't wait to see what I get..... stay warm everyone michelle

Hello Oakley, " But what do I do about the flowers? " Well, if that last picture truly describes the problem, and that species of katydid is the answer to the question in the title to this message thread, then you catch and kill those katydids. In previous messages you have caught in the act a small beetle that was much too small to have done any significant damage, and a young preying mantis, which is carnivorous and your friend in the garden. That katydid can obviously hop like a grasshopper, so he is a formidable enemy. A quick grab at him will probably damage the cosmos bloom, or break its stem, or both. I would probably just scare him off of the bloom and then catch him. If I were wanting to add him to an insect collection, a butterfly net could be an effective tool for catching him. As kids on the farm, we used to shoot large grasshoppers and cicadas with a BB gun. We used a Red Ryder rifle, but nowadays a target BB pistol might be more handy. But there are obvious disadvantages to that approach for your katydids, including the traditional "you will shoot your eye out". At a time when we were renting a townhouse that had only a few square feet of available gardening space, I was growing tomatoes in large containers on the front porch, and we had a serious problem with whiteflies. I used our canister vacuum cleaner to suck the whiteflies up, and that worked quite well. There was some minor accidental leaf damage, but some insects can be easily controlled with a vacuum cleaner hose. Katydids, not so much. At least you would have to remove the crevice tool to make room for them in the hose. I don't have a good solution for you with the Katydids on your Cosmos. Maybe just a pair of gloves to embolden your catching technique. Maybe a butterfly net. There are various insect catching gadgets on Amazon, but none that seem particularly suitable for katydids. A high powered laser gun could do the trick, but then there is that inevitable "you will shoot your eye out". ZM