Despite the original posters overly extensive post, with certain questionable content, the central point is still quite vaild. We as a nation spend more money on grass than on any other crop. That by itself should be reason enough. Read up on the history of lawns and you'll find that they were orginally created as a means of demonstrating wealth (aka, I have this big area and I can afford to do nothing with it except grow grass I can't eat) Regarding the comments of junegem13 and zachslc, you might want to read up on the legal history of this movement. As it turns out, most weed laws (ones based on hight, not on noxious weeds) are unconstitutional. Nonetheless, if you are in a city or subdivision and decide to do a wildflower meadow where there is not an reasonable ordinance, then you should notify your neighbors and the city about why you are doing and the legal preceedants. The EPA has all this information. Regarding property values, that was the original complaint neighbors made against one landowner when she converted her lawn into meadow. When they were unable to demonstrate an actual decrease in property values, the city ordinance was ruled unconstitutional. Afterwards, the neighbors decided if they couldn't beat her that they'd join her and replace their own yards with meadows. Property values in that one neighborhood are now some of the highest in the city (Specific names and places, are available if you want them). Time and time again, lawn alternatives done correctly have shown to raise values, not lower them. In Charlottesville, VA local government is working on an ammendment to exclude native meadows from our weed ordinance. Other cities are doing the same very quicky, especially since the weed ordinance as written by many localites constitutes a legal liability to local governments.

Diane, I feed the deer corn and sometimes other grains down on the edge of the woods several hundred feet from the house because if I don't they come into the yard and eat every single plant that I plant. Over the years, they have eaten over 100 hostas, about as many daylillies, every hollyhock I've ever planted, etc. So, I guess you could say they blackmail me. And, I can't bear to look at starving little fawns in the winter time. I'm just a big softy. The deer herd on our land preceded us. When we bought this land, we had a herd of 5 that now has grown to 9. The two old mama does that were here originally in 1999 are gone now, but their descendents are still here. They have a couple of specific spots where they bed down at night and we stay away from those areas year-round so they'll feel safe there. Love County seems to have a huge overpopulation of deer....many more deer than the area can support. It isn't such a problem in a year with a good mast crop, but in drought years, you see a lot of painfully thin deer. Practically everyone on the 2-3 mile stretch of our road closest to our house feeds the deer and none of us hunt them. We'd rather watch them frolic in the pastures than shoot them. This year, our next-door-neighbor has a deer stand up on his land for the first time since we bought this land in 1997. I believe his son-in-law and daughter put it up, but no one has been using it. Before we put up the 7' tall fence around the garden, they occsionally jumped into my garden and ate everything in sight. I think I grew okra for 4 years before I was able to pick any for us. I wish we had a 7' fence around the acre or two closest to the house so I could have gardens all over. The deer here that live on our property trust us. The does always bring the fawns to the garden, just outside the fence, while I am in it, to show them off while the fawns are teeny, teeny tiny. The first time it happened, I thought it was an accident. But it happens so often now that I think they bring them on purpose to show them off. Having grown up in the city with a non-hunting dad, I never ate venison growing up and really don't like to eat it now, except if I make it into jerky. We made the decision long ago that if we were going to feed the deer, we wouldn't hunt them or let anyone else hunt them on our land....to me, training the deer to come to a feeder so you can shoot them is like shooting fish in a barrel. I have no quarrel with anyone who chooses to hunt, but we just choose not to. We do call 911 and report anyone spotlighting from the road or trespassing onto private, posted property. We've also gone outside with guns and chased poachers off our property. The general feeling here along our road is that there are too many houses here now and way too many domestic animals (raising cows, horses and goats has pretty much replaced farming here) for any of us to feel comfortable allowing hunting on our property. The one neighbor who allows hunting on his property only allows one specific young man to hunt and he hunts only with a bow. This neighbor is between us and the river and his deer herd is so large it is like having a herd of cattle and they destroy his garden every year. He lives in the D-FW metro area and comes up here to his place (where he grew up) on weekends only, so the deer are too comfortable on his place and his garden suffers terribly. Our two old mama does that lived here when we moved here really seemed to like us. (Of course, the garden only had a 3' tall fence then, so they probably loved us because we were feeding them all sorts of wonderful plants during the gardening season.) One of those does used to come look into our breakfast room window occasionally. I could never figure out why she was looking inside, but she was the first one who started bring the fawns to the yard to show them off and she'd often go off and leave them in the yard for an hour or two and then she'd come back and get them. I never lose sight of the fact that deer are wild animals and are dangerous. I feel the same about every other wild animal on our property...they are "wild". We have a neighbor up the road a couple of miles who takes in and raises orphaned baby raccoons....and I think she's playing with fire too (as is your neighbor) because raccoons are mean and dangerous. I think wild animals belong in the wild, not in the house. :) G.M., I remember that. You have to ask yourself what she was thinking getting out of that car? I would have been on the cell phone hollering for someone to come shoot that deer, or if I didn't have a cell phone I either would have laid on the horn to scare it off or I would have started up the engine and driven off. I never figured out how that deer made it into town without someone shooting it or running over it there near Central Park! Like Jay and others said, these deer are not Bambi. I have read of cases in other states where deer have attacked people and killed them. I can always tell whether a deer on our property is one of "our" regular residents just by looking at it. My sister's boyfriend tells me that lots of hunters who regularly hunt on the same place year after year are the same way....they know the regulars by sight. I definitely have a love-hate relationship with the deer. In general I love seeing them around the woods and pastures, but I hate them when I catch them in the yard or garden eating my plants and have been known to let out a dog to chase them off. Once last fall, I left the garden gate open overnight and came outside to find 4 of 'our' deer in the garden. They about destroyed the fence, the gate and the garden trying to get out of there when they saw me because they were just in a blind panic. I've been very careful to check the gate every night since then! I hate deer hunting season. The residents here not only have to worry about inexperienced or careless hunters endangering the residents and their animals, but the constant gunshots ruin the peace and quiet we otherwise enjoy year-round. There's always a fire or two or three started by a careless hunter's campfire or cigarette---one of our worst fires last year was believed to have been started on a high-fenced game ranch and probably by a cigarette---and it burned for over two weeks, day after day, back in rugged, rocky hills in northwestern Love County and kept volunteer fire departments terribly busy. Our emergency personnel also get paged out sometimes to conduct search-and-rescue missions for lost hunters. I'd be just as happy if everyone skipped deer hunting season, but that's not going to happen. I think we see more and more hunters every year....and we still have increasing numbers of deer. Dawn

I don't know why, but the last 2 times in as many days that I've tried to respond on this thread, my comment has just disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle or something. Today, from inside my house, I heard the same screaming. Stepping out on my front walk, I could tell it was up in my pine tree. Look as I might, I could not see the hawk, but there was a ton of noise and commotion up there. I think I saw some grackles and some bluejays hoppping around, and I still wasn't positive there was even a hawk up there, despite the screams (not being a bird expert, I don't know the calls for certain). I thought maybe it was the blue jays screaming. This time I had the camera. i took a step onto the grass under the trees to aim for a better vantage point, but before I could do anything else, a HUGE (wide wingspan) bird flapped out of the tree, away from me and my house, and flew off into the distance. With him flew at least two smaller birds (same as last time). He didn't seem to be chased by them. They seemed to be companions? wingmen? LOL I dont' know. Anyway, I stupidly was trying to turn on my camera although it was already on and I didn't get a picture. I'm marvelling at the fact that this large bird can hide itself in the trees so well. This is the second time I was certain of it's location in a particular tree but still could not see it. Anyway, I think it's pretty cool!

Not combative, arumentative perhaps, but only in response to wildly exagerated claims based on fear, not fact. I offered you the official statements of the State of New York that clearly shows your degree of fear is unwarrented as far as black bears in New York are concerned. Read the paper I linked to from the State. Learn something and you too can be a know-it-all rather than offering fear unencumbered by fact. Something tells me that facts based on real-life statistics and experience will do little to calm your fears, however. I have seen only one bear in the Northern Adirondacks where I live even though this area has the State's largest concentration of black bears. I've come very close to others while hiking in woods in the Catskills when I lived in that area. Each time the bear showed no sign of aggression and retreated immediately. This is as much time I'll spend responding to your childish comments about lying. Certainly, it's more than you deserve. I suspected as much, your suggestion that we in New York remove all our bears. Fortunately, those of us who live here can look at the situation rationally, based on knowledge and experience and know the true risks and the common-sense methods of dealing with them. Methods such as the simple and practical act of calling your neighbors on the occurance of a bear sighting. This common-sense approach lets a neighborhood remove things that may attract bears such as bird feeders, accessable garbage cans and unattended infants in strollers. Without these attractants, a bear will move on. If our state adopts your suggestion, perhaps we can ship the black bears (and our far more numerous "man-eating" dogs) to your state? They might distract the alligators that are killing human Floridians at a far more alarming rate than NY bears and almost as fast as NY dogs.