luckygal, I've also wanted to hang a chandy from a tree branch after seeing so many wonderful ones posted by our gang here. Then late last year a friend found 2 old black ones tossed in her alley trash and she snagged them, giving one to me. I put it on my Someday List. Well a few days ago I found it languishing in a back corner of storage shed and said that does it. Its now painted a bright white... but I'm stuck again. My GJ never has pretty cups and saucers like I want for it. Also, I think it was SusieRose, who did one with birdhouses painted white and the whole thing looks so neat that I wanted to do that. Well, unfinished birdhouses at Michaels are around $5 each and I need 8!! That ain't gonna happen. LOL. So I'm thinking 4 birdhouses and 4 teacups w saucers alternated is the look I want. Provided I find them! Why are the easy the projects so dang hard? LOL hugs, Karen

Ants are an unsolvable problem, spraying only kills workers, and then you can not eat your crops. I was told to buy a bait to have the workers take back to the colony to feed the queen. No queen equals no workers. I bought every type of bait on the market and the ants would not touch it. They were too smart. If someone knows a cure for ants please post that. Try the soil forum, and add lots of compost. It costs a lot of money to buy a lot of compost and add it. It's a huge investment, but there is not much that can be done about the cost of it. Making compost takes time and also money for bins or other products to add to compost mainly browns or else you need lots of leaves. I have page up on my website about composting, if you want to read all my suggestions. Click on the soil link. Here is a link that might be useful: My website

Micki - how well or poorly your soil will work for you pretty much hinges on how water-retentive your soil is and the ht of the perched water it supports, if it supports perched water. The ht of the perched water is locked in a direct relationship with the size of the particles that make up your soil, while the o/a water retention depends on particle size AND what the soil is made from. Turface MVP, used directly from the bag, is too water-retentive to be a good choice as a stand-alone soil ingredient because it has too many fines. Even the larger particles after screening over insect screen to remove the fines are on the lower end of the desirable size range because of how much water they hold. So, if you're using even SCREENED Turface as a primary fraction of your soils, you don't want to mix it with anything that has smaller particles because you'll be introducing additional water retention and increasing the ht of the PWT. As soil particles increase in size, the ht of the PWT diminishes, until at just a little over 1/10" it disappears entirely, so that 1/10-1/8" particle size is going to be ideal. If all of your soil particles are in that range, your soil will not support perched water, and the only water it retains will be inside any porous particles & what is trapped in the micro-pores where the particles touch. This is as close to an ideal situation as you can get. You can get there by screening your ingredients so the size is appropriate. It matters very little what your soil is made OF, as long as it holds a favorable amount of air and water, so a soil that is adjustable for water retention makes perfect sense. Combining screened pine or fir bark with screened Turface and crushed granite offers you a soil that holds little or no perched water and is widely adjustable for water retention. Perched water is primarily what kills roots, saps vitality, and sets the table for the fungaluglies that eat your roots. With an appropriate soil, you also have a much wider margin for error when it comes to watering and fertilizing - it just makes growing soo much easier. Mixing any fine particles into the larger particles negates the lions share of the good the larger particles have the potential to provide. E.g., mixing peat and pine bark 50-50 leaves you with a soil that has the flow through rate of just peat and the same ht PWT as just peat. The o/a water retention is less than that of peat alone, but it's the ht of the PWT and how long it takes it to go away that determines the damage done to fine rootage. You can't start with a volume of fine particles like peat, compost, sand and amend it to reduce the ht of the PWT. It's only when the large particles are present in great enough volume that there's not enough fine p[articles to fill in between the particles that the ht of the PWT begins to be reduced. To envision what I just said, ask yourself how much perlite you have to add to pudding to get it to hold air and drain?? The answer is the perlite needs to be 80%+ of the o/a volume before it begins to have an impact on anything other than o/a water retention. I think you'll be doing yourself a considerable favor if you shoot for something that looks like this: rather than something that contains any significant volume of fine material. Al

I too grew up just north of Boston on a large dairy farm (1500 acres) and we had our own dump for bottles and cans. Nine generations of my family lived and worked on the land (I'm the 11th in this country). There was a collection of artifacts stored in the china closet at my grandparents home. Pottery, arrowheads and tools. I had my own collection of arrowheads and passed them on to a younger cousin. The property we purchased in NH was part of a large farm but on the other side of the road from the house (1746) and barns. When our friends built a new barn we found a bottle dump and had fun for a couple of weeks digging bottles out. Tony I've always wanted a metal detector. Thought it would be a fun hobby. A friend of a friend has found lots of interesting and valuable things along the treasure coast. SaintP where did you grow up?