Hi. I'm a new member and master gardener intern. If any of you use oyster shells to deter moles, could you share with us how to apply it? What I'm doing, which I am NOT sure is right, is digging the hole a little deeper than I need it to end up being, then sprinkling about 2 handsful of crushed oyster shell around the sides and into the bottom of the hole. Then I put a little bit of dirt over the shells and plant the hosta. I'm just in the process of doing this today and wanted to take a break and see if I'm doing it properly. Any experience out there in plant world? I'm looking forward to getting to know you all.

:-) Thanks Coffeemom.....you are too sweet...and I may have to take you up on your offer when I return.....I will be clerking at the Supreme Court of Florida up in Tallahassee ...it is a fabulous opportunity and I am excited about it....thank god I get to take my husband with me...I was not too happy about the thought of leaving him down here too as we are recently married...I do however have to leave my dog....so my excitement is tempered by some sadness as I have never left my baby for more than two weeks at a time...I also almost lost her last year as she is an old bullie and the thought of her dying while I am up in Tallahassee is killing me....so I just keep telling myself she will be fine and I will see her again soon.....it's not like I could have given up the job for the dog....people already think I'm crazy because of her :-) So we will be leaving early tommorrow morning and I will keep you guys informed....I've never been to Tallahassee before so it will be a little adventure....hubby and I will be exploring neighborhoods to see where we want to move after I graduate (we have to get out of Miami)...so it should be fun.....we are also going to see what the apartment is like and hopefully we will be able to sneak my baby in for three months :-)

Nothing will repel a hungry snake no matter what kind of marketing stuff gets posted to our forum. Sandplum, Our son stepped out of his car one evening in summer, after dark but in the lighted area near the security light, and found his foot on top of a copperhead which did not, miraculously, bite him. He hollered "Copperhead!" at us and stepped back into the car, since only that one leg was all the way out of the vehicle. We were sitting in lawn chairs chatting with some friends. That snake, had it chosen to turn and go back into the neighbor's pasture from whence it came, could have and would have lived. Instead, it chose to head straight for the lawn furniture we were sitting upon. Maybe it wanted to seek refuge under the furniture. Big mistake. Tim shot it. I felt kinda bad about that since the snake hadn't even bitten Chris when it certainly had the opportunity, but there's no way we're going to sit there chatting in the yard while a venomous snake prowls around our feet. I hate snakes as much as you do. Dorothy, I wonder where the garter snakes went? We've never had a year that was free of garter snakes and I've already had one in the garden this year. Tim picked it up and carried it far from the garden and released it. I don't mind the garter snakes or rough green tree snakes, but venomous snakes automatically get killed if they venture into our people/animal space and I'm not going to apologize for that. We used to even catch and release rat snakes and chicken snakes, but they just keep coming back to the poultry coops over and over again, feasting on eggs and chicks, so they get the death penalty too if they are in or near the chicken coops. The only good venomous snake is a dead one. We live in too much of a wilderness area to ever be snake-free, and they serve the important function of controlling rodents, but I'm still not going to share yard and garden space with the venomous ones. Our little puppy dog, Princess, who is about six months old now, got bitten by something, probably a snake, in the dog yard last week. It likely hit her inside her mouth so I imagine she bent down low to the ground and tried to pick it up. Her mouth and snout started swelling up something awful immediately and she was in pain and whimpering, so off to the vet we went for a steroid shot. Since even the vet couldn't find fang marks, we'll never know for sure if it it was a snake or some sort of insect, but knowing our snake history, I suspect it was a snake. Our cat, Casper, had seen a snake a short distance from the dog yard several weeks ago (long before I would have thought snakes were active) and he tried to get it, then jumped back away from it, so I suspect it struck at him but missed him. With Princess, the swelling began going down as soon as she got the shot (and some Benadryl) and we continued to give her Benadryl for 48 hours thereafter to keep the swelling down. She's fine now and I hope she learned her lesson about messing with snakes. I would expect the snakes are really getting out and moving more now that we are having sunshine and warmer temperatures, but I haven't seen a lot of them yet. Keep in mind that to my way of thinking, even one snake is one too many. I've run over copperheads with the lawn mower that I never even saw before I hit them. I'm just glad I hit them with the mower instead of stepping on them. I know people who have been bitten by venomous snakes, including our next-door neighbor, and it was a horrible ordeal for them. The recovery is not easy and complications can last for months afterwards. We had tons of copperheads in our early years, but in more recent years we see them a lot less. Unfortunately, the situation is reversed with the timber rattlers. We didn't see too many of them in our earliest years here, but for about the last 10 years, we see higher numbers of timber rattlers every year. Last year was the worst ever and it is a miracle I wasn't bitten by one because I had way too many close calls where I came within inches to 2' to 3' of timber rattlers before seeing them. For a while I was seeing them almost daily. The one that was within a few inches of my foot was very small. Had it been larger, I might have been in trouble.

I assume this is an HCG thread? Honestly, why would you go on a diet where you don't even know what you can eat? Get off of that immediately, and start eating sensibly. Develop reasonable habits that you can sustain for a lifetime. A 500 calorie diet is only putting you on a fast track to yoyo dieting. Binging and crashing. Bad. Bad. Very bad. Do some goggling about the HCG diet. Read the credible, science based web sites, not the quackery sites that are selling the snake oil. You will discover that it is a scam.