Hi Eric - I'm a couple of hours east of you, on the south side of Raleigh (zone 7b). My yard is only an acre and a half but every square inch of it is garden. I've only been at this location for 2 years, before that I was 15 minutes further east in Garner in a large inner town lot which was mostly deep shade. I grow a lot of the freaky stuff but most of what I have now is small and not big enough to fruit or take cuttings off of. I've been gardening most of my life but this is the first time that I have completely nose dived into hard core food production. I drive up to Afton VA. to Edible Landscaping nursery once a year and a lot of what I grow comes from them (it's only 4 hours away). I have also planted some of the stranger fruits from One Green World out on the west coast. I grow a lot of the super tropicals from seeds collected from fruit I buy at the local asian market. One of my successes that I will be able to share soon is 'Cumberland' Black Raspberry. I started out with two plants and now that I have them in full sun they are monsters that out perform all the other cane crops. The flavor is very blackberry ish. Bumper crops, no spraying, no disease, but lots of management due to aggressive growth.

April 15 - 16 - coastal NC. Please visit www.nccoast.org for more information about the festival and for a complete listing of native plants available for sale.

The poles aren't as strong as you might think (native cane). The plants are very sensitive to the occasional droughts. I had a good stand behind my back yard in a forest and during the drought they died off . Later I found it growing in a low spot that normally floods. Ground water is going to be the key issue and rain runoff ditches are probably the best site for establishing a stand. Still, they spread underground and re-establish where there is adequate and continuous moisture so I have no idea how you would contain them. I don't find them attractive at all. A summertime short visual barrier if there's enough moisture but the rest of the year and in dry periods they do look ratty and the dead,dying leaves do persist. Are you trying to hide a view? As I mentioned, they aren't a permanent barrier. In the riverine (drainage/creek overflow) forest they would pop up in a different location every few years.

More about our birds. . . How we came to have the parakeet is a story in itself. Mother was out in the garden hanging up the laundry one sunny day and out of nowhere a blue & white parakeet flew right down and landed on Mother's shoulder. She nibbled lovingly on Mother's ear and mother said, "Well hello there" and the bird said, "Ooooh. Hello!" And Mother said, "So, who are you?" The bird replied, "Pretty Bird!" So, she kept her name. She never flew away after finding a nice home, having no desire to try living out in the big free world ever again. We never did find out from whence she came. I would like to add about the Mexican Love Bird. . . . . .that after cursing out the preacher and telling him to "Go to Hell!", and saying things like "Well, -uck a duck!", our love bird never said any of the really foul swear words ever again. Mother said it must have just been a cleansing thing for her, but I have always wondered just what Mother did to make her "repent" and come clean.??? And as for our parakeet, Pretty Bird? After her jello bath, she began saying, "Oooooh, Pretty Bird. Pretty Bird is a dirty bird!" We kids got so much fun out of her. She loved Orange Jell-O, not just for bathing but for eating it as well. She especially loved it when mother made it into a salad by adding grated carrots and chopped walnuts. Yum yum! She would walk across the table and sample everything. If she found something she particularly didn't like, she would make a mess of it and have a fit! So afterward she had to kept up during meals. She would fuss and squawk at us from her cage, demanding to be loosed at once! As you said, covering her cage was helpful in quieting her down. She would then say, "Good night Pretty Bird!" which would then of course, set us all into a round of giggles. ~Annie