Honestly I find the more I remove myself from the care of my plants the better they do. I've tried so many things like humidifiers, heaters, grow lights, I even bought a misting system for amphibians and built a glass case for some plants. It all got to time consuming and costly to keep up so finally just went with the room at its normal light, temperature and humidity. I devote one morning a week which is Sunday from 6AM to 9AM to watering, if I have time I water a few plants again on Wednesday. I use a pump sprayer to water so I can control the water flow. I like to spray a small amount of water over a longer period of time instead of dumping water into the pot and having it spill right out the bottom. I feel this gives more time to let the roots soak up water. For plants in standard pots I will even put my finger over the drainage hole for a minute to be sure everything is saturated. MOunted plants and plants in baskets I will soak in a bucket of water for 5 minutes or so. You have to change the water between plants to prevent spreading bugs or disease. I use the waste water for my dirt plants. For plants that don't like to be dry I use semi hydroponic pots with hydroton as a media, I also have switched some plants to hydroton as the media in regular pots. Sometimes its hard to find good potting bark, I find a lot of places store their potting media outside where it gets wet and breaks down so if the bag isn't clear I don't buy it. As for suggestions on fragrant plants I like Zygopetalums are great, the scent can fill the room. I like the BLC Tangs and LC love knot are good because the bloom a few times a year. Brassavola Nodosa and Angracums are nice because they are fragrant at night. Check out the Oakhill gardens site. They have a list of fragrant plants , I also see they have a Angracum Sesquipedale in seedling size. Good luck

Wow, thanks for all the suggestions, ya'll. The raccoons actually come down the trees into the fenced dog yard when they don't want to walk around the fence. Or, they try to walk on top of the fence, it's chainlink! Or, they drop like paratroopers onto the roof, but they only do thatin the middle of the night, when I'm finally in that really good deep sleep. One night they landed on the roof and ran back and forth over the bedroom, the big dogs running back and forth under the window barking. What gets me is that the garbage cans are on the other end of the house and they can easily go around the fence to get to the food and water. I think they enjoy the chaos. I think it's some sort of raccoon gang ritual, they can't join the club if they don't successfully finish a mission. They crack me up when they move the garbage cans. The cans have locking lids so they can't get into them, but they used to knock them over. I've trained them not to tip them over. I used a dog training method where you put 10-15 pennies in a soda can and rubber band some plastic wrap on top, them set the cans on whatever you want to train the animals not to get on. When they try to get on the trashcans they knock off the soda cans and it makes a big racket. It only took a couple of nights and they stopped knocking the garbage over. It worked soo well that they learned how to move the trashcans without making the soda cans fall over. I tried the soda can thing on the container where I keep the dog and cat food. But this box is only about 18 inches tall and those 'coon figured out how to pick up the soda cans and set them down on the floor without dropping too many. They amaze me. We had lights on motion sensors, but they very quickly learned not to run away from the lights. A funny thing happened one night - My mother-in-law was having diner with us and this happened right outside the dining room window.) One of 'em landed on top of a wide metal cabinet and BAM the light came on, and he tried to scramble away but couldn't get any traction so his little claws just clanged and scrambled to the left and then to the right, and then he tried to jump straight up but flipped off the back instead. It was like the lights came on and the darned 'coon started tap dancing. Now she jokes about how I train raccoons as well dogs. Another funny happened when we were getting the house ready to move into. (The previous tennents only went outside to throw bags of trash in the yard, so the raccoons where used to feasting.) I was here cleaning late one night all alone and went out to have a smoke. Well, a couple minutes after I sat down on the porch some huge creature jumped up on the railing near my head. Well, I screamed and it screamed and I ran for the door and it fell off the porch. That was my first night alone in this house and my first experience with these raccoons. It took us a while to figure out why the raccoons would come to the house when we would go out on the porch. Like I said earlier, the prev tenants only came on the porch to throw bags of garbage into the yard. They did this for years. I guess the raccoons associated the opening of the porch door with food. Some kind of Pavlovian response, huh? So you see, we moved into their neighborhood, it's just taking us a while to learn all the new rules. **Hey Wild4wildlife, I worked at a vet hospital before we moved here, and it's true that deer can jump 6 foot privacy fence. Many times we'd get called out to a client's property because deer would jump the fence. The deer would either have a broken leg from getting caught on the fence OR the deer would be confused on how to get back out of the yard. The strangest was a doe that had gotten into a 2nd story corn crib, without a ladder. The only way she could've gotten up there was by getting on top of a truck and jumping the remaining 4-5 feet into the open door. You know, I thought I left all these wildlife shenanagens behind when I moved out of the country and into the suburbs. Ya'll take care

Rachel, A quick pull on their neck and they are done for. House Sparrows do not belong here at all and they are not humane at all when they raid the nest box of a pair of Bluebirds. They grab the skull of the female most often as she tries to defend her nest inside the cavity. Then they slowly pinch and pinch until the female Bluebird is dead. I have even see where they have built their nest over the dead body of the female Bluebird and her eggs. Because of this I feel no pity at all for them and no it is not their fault they are here but that is no reason to tolerate them in any fashion. Once you trap and destroy these no good birds for a few seasons you start noticing how many more native American birds are starting to show up at your feeders and that is a wonderful thing. Getting rid of House Sparrows and Starlings helps all native birds not just the bluebird and because of my trapping and killing them native birds of all kinds are very common here...Mike

I agree with the previous post that I would not mind blue birds pooping on my truck or car at all. Just wash your car more often and enjoy the fact that a nearly extinct beautiful bird is pooping on your car. Most of us on this forum would love to have your problem. This forum is for those of us who love these little blue baby's survive by going to great lengths to protect them. They were nearly extinct because they have so many predators to compete with in the wild and the fact that we humans encroach on the wild animals habitat by taking away more and more land of the land they live in for our ever expanding out of control population and greed. Are you sure they are blue birds and not swallows because they can look alike to the untrained birder eye. However both blue birds and swallows are welcome to poop all over my truck, because the swallow eats a ton of mosquitoes and are also beautiful birds to have around. You can tell if they are swallows by watching them in flight, if you cannot see the color difference in the two birds, swallows have bluish purple shiny wings. The best way to know if it is a swallow is to look at them in flight , there wings look like a boomerang and they will fly around in the same area if there is a good bug hatch on to feed. The blue bird male is very very blue and they tend to dart from place to place feeding on bugs in the air and often on the ground. If your interested in keeping your car clean from a bird that is so loved and protected by so many people all over the country than I would say you have come to the wrong forum. My answer is, as a blue bird lover is enjoy these nearly endangered, friendly, beautiful bird with a song that is so sweet and long to be heard by us here on this forum every year. Put up some blue bird houses if you can on your land and enjoy them instead of trying to keep them from pooping on your cars. We can wash the poop of of the very thing that is nearly making the blue bird and many other species in the wild extinct. Enjoy nature and its creatures and beauty now because it may not be there for long. Im sorry to make this post so long and I may come across as a tree hugging democrat. Not true at all, I have been hunting and fishing all my life own guns legally, and love to be out in the woods away from people with my dogs running off leash where they are the happiest. But over the years these wooded areas got smaller and smaller because us humans have exploded in numbers. We build houses in the woods but call 911 when they see a bear or a coyote in the back yard and immediately want them killed because they want to live in the country but do not want there kids getting attacked by a wild animal that has most likely made the land that was taken away from them by a human there hunting feeding grounds for years and years. And of course the wild animal always loses in the long run. OMG I just got myself all worked up on this subject. I apologize, but I guess you may get the drift that I am for protecting the birds that pooping on your car rather than chasing them away. UH, yah I went a little to far but just wash your cars and enjoy nature while we have it to enjoy. Gina