Oh, Sandy, that buck story is hilarious. LOL. As for an intercom system, I don't have one of those now, but did when my girls were babies. My dad made it for me. I was always afraid I wouldn't hear them, but they both had great lungs. Once, he rigged up an old school bell to my phone. It's not funny, yet it was, but the reactions of company when the phone rang, would crack you up. A couple of folks were out the door before they realized what it was. I have been able to have the windows open all day the past week, and it is neat to hear all the noises from outside, waterfall included. I have to be careful though, cause sounds like that probably keep my husband up at night. Poor, wonderful guy. The things he will do for me. When I first found out 2 years ago, it rattled me a little, but it is just one of those things that have to be taken in stride. I've been keeping myself up to date on the progress of research into Retinitus Pigmentosa, which is what I have, plus the hearing loss, and things look promising. Will wait and see, and in the meantime, I will walk verryy carefully. A sense of humor helps alot, and I told my daughter, who is 20, that someday she could call me Helen Keller. She said, "Who's that?" I just shook my head and laughed. Gosh, I love those girls. :)

tim45z10, I'm pretty confident that you're seeing one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tyto_alba_1_Luc_Viatour.jpg It's a Western Barn Owl (which are apparently found all over the world). We've have some nesting in a neighbor's palm tree two years running. They're beautiful to watch... powerful fliers. They frequently swoop in low to investigate my nieghbor when he leaves for work at 2:15 a.m. Noisy with an oddball collection of vocalizations. Sometimes they make a sound like a squirrel-cage fan motor that's out of balance (chikchikchikchikchikchik...) for minutes on end. Enjoy, they're big rat eliminators. Here is a link that might be useful:

Hi Jeff! Hey, it is ONLY June. Those tomato plants could be 10' tall by August! Just to clarify, I always cage my tomatoes, AND I stake the cages AND the plants. Here is how I do it, and there are many other ways to do it as well. When I plant the tomato plant into the ground, I pound a 3' stake into the ground a couple of inches from the plant and loosely tie the plant to it with a zip-tie. This helps encourage the plant to stand up straight and tall as it begins to branch out rapidly....sometimes they get too heavy too fast and lean sideways a little. Secondly, I put the cage around the plant and stake the cage on 2 to 4 sides, depending on that variety's general rate of growth. The stakes help keep the cage from tipping over when we have a thunderstorm with very strong winds. I also attach the stakes to the cage with zip ties. I use zip ties a lot. After the tomato plant is a couple of feet tall, I cut the zip tie holding the plant to the original stake so the zip tie won't cut into the ever-enlarging main stem. If we are having a REALLY windy year, I run a bamboo stick or PVC pipe horizontally through several cages so they can help hold each other up. If a plant becomes a big monster and the cage is in imminent danger of tipping over, I add a 4' to 6' tall metal fence post as a stake on the side from which the wind usually blows, which for us in the summer is from the south. Sometimes, in spite of all you do, a cage will topple over anyway. That is where good mulching comes in. If your garden is well mulched, the toppled plant won't get a lot of foliar disease from the dirt. I am glad you enjoyed your first tomato. Home-grown ones are SO-O-O-O much better. You do know, don't you, that you shouldn't refrigerate homegrown tomatoes if you can avoid it? Once the homegrown tomatoes are refrigerated, their taste and texture both change and they are almost as bad as grocery store tomatoes. For fall tomatoes, you are at the mercy of whatever the stores have. There are some hybrid tomatoes that produce better in the heat, like Sunmaster, Sun Leaper, or Heat Wave II. Unfortunately, they were NOT bred for good flavor. I'd still go with ANY available heirloom, except Brandywine, which does not produce well in our heat. ANY cherry or paste tomato produces through the heat of the summer. I have had the best production in summer months from Better Boy, Big Boy, Bucks County, Porter, Beefmaster, Big Beef, Brandy Boy, Nebraska Wedding, Mule Team, Box Car Willie, Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, Arkansas Traveler, Bradley Pink, Lemon Boy, Super Boy (lots of tomatoes, but poor flavor), Fourth of July (same problem as Super Boy), and Celebrity as far as big tomatoes go. Well, Porter and 4th of July aren't big, but they are bigger than cherries. Among cherry/grape/currant tomatoes, these are my favorites for summertime/fall production: SunGold, SunSugar, Ildi, Black Cherry, Sweet Million, Orange Santa, Dr. Carolyn, Rosalita, Coyote and Snow White. Among paste tomatoes, almost any of them will produce in the heat. Some of our faves include Principe Borghese (for sun-dried tomatoes), Amish Paste, Orange Banana, Black Plum, Viva Italia, and San Marzano or San Marzano Redorta. Of course, my favorites tend to be different every time I type a list because there are so many good ones, and many produce better in the heat than I had expected. For me the ones that DON'T produce well in the heat are those that make really large beefsteak type tomatoes, generally those weighing in excess of a pound each. I never get very good fall tomatoes from large pink-fruited ones or from large bi-colored ones, altohugh Lucky Cross may prove to be the exception. Hi Hank, As a minimum container size for a single-staked indeterminate, it depends on the particular variety. Some indeterminates top out at 4' or so feet and could probably survive in a 5 to 10 gallon container as long as you water at least twice a day every day. I don't like to grow them in anything less than 10 to 20 gallon containers, and mine do best in 20 gallon or larger containers. No matter how large a tomato plant gets in the ground, it will always be smaller in a container where its roots are more confined. Container-grown plants need more frequent feeding as the constant watering leaches nutrients out of the soil. I have had NO LUCK staking container grown tomatoes. They really need to be caged. To keep them from blowing over, I put the cage on the ground with the container sitting inside the cage. I then stake the cage to the ground. It makes it impossible to move the plant around, but it keeps the container from blowing over when the wind blows. In my largest containers, the tomato plants hardly ever get taller than 7' or 8' tall. Often, they stay in the 4' to 5' tall range, depending on the variety and the container size. I just look at a 5 gallon bucket and estimate sizes of containers upward from there. Some of the best containers don't come from the garden center. Those square Rubbermaid-type storage totes make great containers if you drill or cut drainage holes into the bottoms of them. If you don't like the available colors, you can spray paint them with the Krylon Fusion spraypaint for plastics. Some of my favorite containers are 'muck buckets' sold at feed stores and farm and ranch stores. You can turn almost anything into a container if you put drainage holes in it. I know people who grow tomatoes in cheap 25 or 30 gallon trash cans. They fill the bottom half with shredded mulch and get put soil in the upper half. You can grow huge plants in containers that size. Dawn

Looks like I finally found who that mystery frog is, I checked link on leaps.ms - it sounds close, but not exactly, so I googled for NC tree frogs and started to listen all on this page http://bio.davidson.edu/herpcons/herps_of_NC/anurans/anurans.html Spring Peeper sounds exactly the same, also it says: "Rarely seen during the summer months, spring peepers loudly announce their presence during warm, rainy nights and overcast days, most frequently from November to April. However, if conditions are right, they may call at any time of the year." It is down to 41F now, but they still singing, I have hard time believing they can be so active and happy with such low body temperature :)