We had a long discussion about it two or three years ago. MichaelG suggested that it should and could be alternaria blight. Comparing my roses to the very few photos of alternaria available I had serious doubt that it could be anything else but botrytis. I also sent photos to NCStte univeristy that provides consultation and does lab tests for Extension Services. They came back with Botrytis. I also sent them samples but by the time they got it the samples were contaminated with something that is present on dying tissues. They ruled out alternaria - the guy who answered my emails and dent the report on the samples is an expert on alternaris, so I guess, if he rules that out, I should accept this as a fact. So still don't know the scientific answer but those roses of mine sure looked botrytis ridden to me. I also found a paper from Brazil that stated that if humidity's is over 90% for many hours, botrytis spores could survive up to 112F. Here, relatively close to the coast we have o0ver 90^% humidity and dew from early evening till mid morning.That amounts to more than 10 hours, rather more. This again leads me to believe that was botrytis I had. Baldo also said the Botrytis is a year-around problem in Hawaii.

Fire ants make mounds and not holes. The mounds start out small and become larger as the colony population increases. These mounds look rather innocent until you disturb them, and ALL of the ants boil out of the mound all at once. Again, there is never a discernible hole. I never worry about ants in my yard and garden, other than fire ants. Fire ants can be a problem for humans, pets, bird nests, beneficial insect eggs and larvae, and such.

try a sod cutter. PL

The common yellow oxalis we have here has tiny "bulbules" (sp?), which lurk 12 -18 inches under the ground. You can easily pull up the plants, of course, but those tiny bulb things stay under the soil, and up it comes again. I once had a gardener who decided to eradicate it from a flower bed which is about 12 feet long and 6 feet wide. He actually dug up the top 2 feet of soil, and sifted it by hand to get all of the tiny bulbs out. That worked for the first year, but by 2-3 years after he did that, back the oxalis came. So, being lazy, what I do is just admire it in the Spring, except where it is trying to smother other plants. Then just pull it out around those plants. By late Spring here it has died down, and I pretend it is gone. Of course, it comes up again the next Spring. It is one of our first blooming plants to bloom (starts Jan/Feb), so I just regard it as such and let it be mostly. One of my cats likes to eat it (we used to eat it as children - we called it "sour grass"). Jackie