Just a thought - I see another problem you may have - you have a metal structure/trellis/whatever it is very close by, and there is a wall behind that seems to be also close. Anything they can climb on, they will. If the roof is low enough, they will 'hang' off the eaves & try to reach. If there is anything on the wall that they could hold on to, they will. It is constant battle with them. Try something that worked for me well (I don't have fruit trees, but they try to use parts of garden and/or roof for a bathroom): I filled few saucers with Pine Sol, and placed around. Aparently they don't like the smell. I actually emptied 1/2 of bottle of it over the garage roof. They did not come back, but started using neighbours deck-right by the sliding door! So they also put out saucers of Pine Sol, it worked pretty good. You have to re-apply after the rain. My friend did the same, it did work for them but they didn't feel it was enough. Now they are trying scattering moth balls around their (raccoons) favored places. I know these are 'folk remedies', I tried few & Pine Sol worked best for me - so far. Rina

Oh, its the ROSES! A friend from church (we live down one black on the same street) was walking towards our house to get his car after service and he said he could smell them (we currently have 112)half way down the street well before you even see a glimpse of the house. Here is a very recent pic of the front yard you see coming down the street. This pic was taken standing in the next door neighbor's driveway. Many of the climbing roses here are planted along with honeysuckle, I LOVE the smell, though DH says the best way to trim them would be to get a machete... I just got 6 little heliotrope plants for the children's Secret Garden, to plant around a stone birdbath. I love the honey fragrance! To see more pics of our gardens in our front, back and side yards, and recent landscaping projects, ck out my Picture Trail: careytearose Here is a link that might be useful: look at the Landscaping Projects 2007 and Favorite ROSES we grow albums

here are some perfumes that are true to the flower jasmine: serge lutens a la nuit serge lutens sassasins demeter jasmine pikaki: child lily: serge lutens un lys tuberose: diptyque do son Il Profumo Eclair de Tubereuse Michael by Michael Kors (has a musky background scent, but the but the main note is tuberose & very true to the flower) Annick Goutal Gardenia Passion (smells like tuberose) Estee Lauder Tuberose-Gardenia gardenia: yves rocher desir de gardenia (smells EXACTLY like a fresh cut gardenia and inexpensive) kai perfume oil (smells exactly like a fresh cut gardenia, expensive and even better than yves rocher. get the perfume oil and not the edp spray) Perfumers cannot capture the gardenia scent from the gardenia so they have to create it. Many times they use tuberose plus other things to create a gardenia scent. @ cool plants: you said "a lot of fragrances (Essential Oils)are combinations of scents, an approximation of what a perfumier thinks it smells like." this is true of perfumes but not essential oils. essential oils are not created, but the oil is extracted or distilled from the actual plant, either from the stems, leaves and flowers depending on the purpose.

Jeff, You know that I am always going to tell you the truth, good or bad, whether it is going to encourage you to try something or discourage you from trying it, so here goes. Keep in mind, this is just the opinion of one person and other people may feel differently and other people may have great success with strawberries in this climate. I love, love, love growing edible plants--fruits, veggies, herbs, even edible flowers. However, my plants have to "pay their way" which means, to me, the edible yield I get from the plants has to be large enough to make it worth my while to plant them. If not, I won't grow them. Based on several attempts at growing strawberries, I have found that, based on the amount of space they require, the cost of the plants themselves and the cost of feeding them, keeping pests away, protecting the crop from sowbugs and birds, etc., they are not a good crop for me. I never get a yield that is enough berries to justify the space/time/cost devoted to growing them. So, I don't grow them. It is a decision I made quite a few years back, but I don't regret it. I just don't get enough berries per plant or berries per square foot or however you want to look at it to make it worth my while to grow them. I never recommend to anyone else that they grow them either. Generally I just keep my mouth shut and don't try to discourage anyone from growing them, but "growing strawberries" is one of those things that sounds better than it really is. I'll find and link the OSU info on growing strawberries. Please pay special attention to how many plants they recommend for the average family in order for you to get a good berry harvest, because it is staggering. I'd never devote that much space to that many plants unless I was getting an outstanding yield from the plants. Pay careful attention to any fertilizer recommendations because you won't get many berries if your plants have too much nitrogen. Other than that, it might be the variety--a lot of varieties sold here grow better crops in cooler summer climates. You also could google and find the Sam Noble Foundation (Ardmore) website. They have done a lot of research using plasticulture and hoop houses to boost strawberry production but it is unlikely many home gardeners would go to that extreme to grow strawberries. IF I ever were to make the decision that I wanted to grow strawberries again, I'd do it the Noble Foundation way--building a large raised bed under a hoop house and using plasticulture. You probably shouldn't hold your breath waiting for that to happen. : ) I read something once where a Texas A&M horticulturalist was talking about strawberries and what he basically said was that people, especially less-experienced gardeners, typically fall in love with the "idea" of growing strawberries. Because they are so in love with that idea, they tend to accept very low harvests/very poor production and go on growing them anyway. He pointed out that the average home gardener would never accept such poor production from a tomato or bean variety, or whatever, but would move on to something else that produces a better return on the investment. In fact, he seemed baffled that many gardeners continue to try to get strawberries to grow here when they just aren't crazy about our climate and aren't heavy producers in it. So, as I see it, you can try to figure out if the variety you have is well-adapted to our climate. You can try fertilizing the way OSU directs and see if it increases your yield. After you've gone through these efforts to increase your strawberry production, you can decide if growing strawberries is "worth it" to you. Clearly, I long ago decided it wasn't "worth it" for me. I'll use a couple of tomato plants as examples too. Let's say that I give every tomato plant I plant in the ground an area 3' x 3' to grow in. If I plant a Brandywine in that 3' x' 3' square, it may give me 3 to 6 large (about 1 lb.) tomatoes during the growing season, so let's say 3 to 6 pounds of tomatoes. If I plant a Brandy Boy in that space, it may give me 30 to 45 half-pound tomatoes, so let's say 15 to 22 pounds of tomatoes in the same space. Which am I going to choose? Clearly, Brandy Boy. While Brandywine has superior flavor, it is hard to justify giving that space to Brandywine when I get oodles more tomatoes that taste almost as good from Brandy Boy. But, there's another kind of example--because flavor has to matter. One year I grew both Super Boy and Fourth of July and they produced more tomatoes per plant than anything I've ever grown and they produced all summer long. So, why not grow only those two? Because their flavor is average at best (Fourth of July) to bland (Super Boy). So, you have to decide for yourself if the # of pounds you get from your strawberries AND the flavor/enjoyment you get from the harvest is "enough" to encourage you to keep on growing them. And, of course, you chould choose to continue to grow them just for the enjoyment of growing them. Your choice. For what it is worth there are some fruits that produce enough harvest in a home garden that they are "worth it". On that list, I'd put blackberries and blueberries right at the top because both produce a lot of berries per plant. Of the remaining tree or vine crops, I'd say it is generally worth one's while to plant these, listed in descending order by yield/consistency: Figs, Plums, Peaches, Pears, Grapes, Apricots, Nectarines, Cherries and Apples. The problems with plums and peaches is that they bloom too early and often lose their blooms or small fruit to late freezes. With apples and pears, fire blight and cedar apple rust make growing them a challenge, but if you can keep them alive, you'll get a lot of apples per tree. Figs are very consistent producers and rebound quickly even if they freeze to the ground. I didn't even include raspberries, currants and gooseberries on the list because most give very low yields in our climate. Grapes can give great yields if you can keep them healthy and you prune them properly. Cherries, esp. the variety Montmorency, generally do better here than most people think they will. So, if it is growing fruit that interests you, there's a lot of types of fruit you can try in addition to strawberries. And, you can even grow dwarf citrus fruit, including lemons, limes and Satsuma oranges in large pots as long as you can overwinter them indoors. Some people even get bananas from plants in the ground, although you have to have a "perfect" year in which they flower early and form fruit and then you have a late first fall freeze so the bananas get a chance to ripen. With bananas, though, I'd say only folks in 7b have a really good chance of getting a harvest every 3rd year or so. I have a friend in Ft. Worth who gets them about that often in zone 8. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: OSU: Strawberries in the Home Garden