Oh Masha! What a great service you offer us here at the OGR Forum. Your photography is absolutely stunning! I have taken the bait, will be purchasing Rosette Delizy this year! Can't stand not having this rose now that I've seen what she has done in your garden. Absolutely beautiful coloring! Thanks so much for sharing! I am forever grateful for your contribution to this gallery. Audrey

I'm sure your landscape lures more birds into your yard and makes them feel safer when they are visiting your feeders, Gary-. It's great to hear that you have so many wonderful species coming by. I get quite a few goldfinches at a time, too. They seem happiest in flocks, like the chipping sparrows do. But mine LOVE the thistle sock. They will eat sunflower seeds, etc, from the tray feeder, too, but the sock will sometimes be completely covered by clinging birds. Last year they emptied several completely. And they stayed until they were almost in full breeding plumage. It was fun to watch them go from grayish brown and black to brilliant yellow and black. Yep, they are cheerful little birds that brighten the yard, and I'm always sorry to see them go. But when they have buntings with them, both painted and indigo, it's even better. I noticed last year, btw, that the indigo buntings spent as much time picking through the grass as they did on the feeder tray. They were down there with the chipping sparrows an awful lot. Have you seen that, too? Marcia

Dorothy, Maybe you did wipe out all of them last year. We have potatoes in 3 separate areas and only one of those areas has had the potato beetles. Other beds in that garden that sit directly across a 2'-wide pathway haven't even had them. I grew potatoes in that raised bed two years ago and did have some CPBs hatch out in it last year, but thought I got all of them. Apparently I didn't. I planted far too many potatoes and planted them in little spurts of activity over a fairly long period of time, so the oldest ones are between 3 and 4' tall and the youngest ones are only about a foot tall. Merely because there's so many potato plants, I have been expecting major CPB trouble, but so far it has been only minor trouble. I'm hoping I caught and squished them all before they could lay more eggs. All of the plants aren't blooming yet. About 60% have bloomed, and the bloom time definitely seems linked to the variety. In most cases you see where one variety stops and another starts because either the blooms change colors or there are no blooms. I'll be miserable at potato digging time. We have 6 rows of potatoes 40' long , 8 rows 12' long and 4 rows 10' long. I'll be hot and tired and cranky while digging them....but we'll likely have a year's supply of potatoes when I'm done. Since I planted far less tomato plants this year, that opened up a lot of space, and I filled it with potatoes. Wbonesteel, In my garden, it is teeny-tiny grasshoppers that are eating holes in the potato foliage right now. They've been at it for days. The ones I've seen this week are about 1/16" long and are brown. I have a lot of song birds in the garden all the time (until I walk into it) and I think they are catching all the grasshoppers they can find and are eating them, because the larger grasshoppers (maybe 1/4" long and most were green) that were in there last week aren't around any more. I've also found some potato leaf hoppers in there and have killed every single one I've seen...which has been only 3 or 4. Last year was a bad year pretty much statewide for cutworms, including the climbing cutworms, and for army worms. After I sprayed the plants (although I wish I'd sprayed earlier) with Bt, that was the end of them. We must have wiped them out for the most part because I haven't seen many of those this year either, or maybe the birds have been eating the army worms. Today while I was in the garden picking sugar snap peas, the rows of potatoes were buzzing with lots of bees, especially big fat bumble bees, visiting the potato flowers. The sugar snap peas have been doing great all spring and we've picked a lot of them. Today was the final harvest. Ever since we started hitting the mid-90s a day or two a week, they have been developing powdery mildew down low to the ground, and now it is moving up the plants. So, after I harvested two 5-gallon buckets full of snap peas this morning, I pulled up all the pea plants and hauled them to the compost piles. I'll work compost into those areas tomorrow and plant a summer crop of something else in the now-bare space. I get too enthusiastic when weeding too and am my garden's own worst enemy once I get going. Luckily, since I overplant and have too much of everything, we can afford to lose a few plants here and there and we don't even miss them. (I deliberately overplant so that I can kill a few plants and still have plenty.) I loved working outside in the garden this morning. It was so cool and foggy and really pleasant despite the high humidity. Then the sun came out and ruined it out....it is too muggy out there now to be considered pleasant, so I am going to process all the snap peas this afternoon, putting aside some fresh ones to eat over the next few days and then blanching and freezing the rest. Dawn

HTown, don't be too comfortable with them. I've been feeding the ones in our yard off and on for awhile, but I never get too close to them. No matter how "familiar" you may be with them, they still have an instinctive distrust for people and they have the potential to be dangerous. Most people don't like them because they've had bad experiences with them, just like many other types of wildlife that invade or wreak some form of destruction on their property, and that's completely understandable. They can also be aggressive towards pets. I made a point of mentioning to my neighbors that there were raccoons active in our area. If you get to feeding them and slack off, they could move on to another property where they're not as welcome and that could have negative consequences for the neighbor, the raccoon or both. I'm not saying don't feed or enjoy them, but make sure you educate yourself on them before you get into it on a regular or semi-regular basis. Make sure there are no means for them to access your house including the roof and chimney, because once they know where the food is coming from they could try to find an easier way to get to it. It's best not to leave food for them near your house for this reason. One of the first things I did when I knew how much they came around was make sure they couldn't get on our roof from any trees, the area around our deck was sealed, and our chimney cap was secure. I added chicken(Actually smaller gapped fencing than chicken wire) wire around the opening to ensure there was no access.(Something I was going to do anyway to deter the birds that ended up in our living room.) This link I found can cover it a little more indepth. These are just tips, but they can be helpful. Feeding Tips I guess my message is it's fine to enjoy them, but make sure you know what you're getting yourself in for, as there are a few things to consider. :-)