Oh thank you so much for allowing me to indulge myself lol! I don't think there is enough of a micro climate to sustain them through winter since we live on a river we tend to get colder down at the bottom of the valley than it gets up on top. I'll put some in this year and mulch them heavily next fall and wait and see. Tracy, I do have two of the newer hydrangeas that I am testing right now. I planted them last spring, they bloomed, then drought kinda got to all of my shrubs even though I watered them daily. They're supposed to be hardy for my zone but I can tell you that it requires a lot of water to keep them from wilting, they're also supposed to be able to take full sun. One is Limelight and the other is Fire...something, can't think of it's name right now. I planted them in partial shade by the garage. We'll see if they make it through winter. If they do they might be an option for me too. I'd probably have to put them on a drip system though because they would be in full sun on the west side of the house. Gottagarden, thanks for the suggestions. I'll look into those things you've suggested. I know there has to be a plant that will work there. I need to do more research. MeMo

WOW I am glad I'm not the only one with snakes. They are all over here. I came home the other day and my chicken coop was closed which was really weird. THought my daughter must have came home and there was a hurt chicken and she closed it in. WEnt to reopen it and looked, and before I could open the door laying at the bottom of the door was a, I would say 4 to 5 ft snake. This thing was huge.Never seen a snake in the wild that big.I got my critter book out and couldn't find the snake in it so to protect our animals and ourself we had to kill the snake. WE don't like to kill things well OK gophers and dilla's are not a favorite either but they make big holes that our horses can break legs in. If I can catch a animals and bring it somewhere else I will do it but sometimes it can't be done. I am a major animal lover but sometimes you need to do what you need to do. Farmers here tell me one of their biggest problems is people. people breed dogs and then the dogs go wild and attack the cows.OR run after the cows and the cows run and trip in one of those darn dilla holes and break a leg and the farmer is out a few hundred to a few thousand dollars for a cow. I don't think alot of people like to kill animals but its a thing sometimes that needs to be done. My dog which most of the farmers know around here came home with a bullet hole in her leg. Glad it wasn't really bad and I'm glad they didn't kill her but I can't blame the farmers they are just protecting their animals.A cow or a horse cost alot and you don't want them hurt. Most of us farmers try to get along with all the animals but sometimes the animals don't want to get along with us.I use to live in the city but now after being in the country I see the diffrences.So really others need to walk in our shoes before they judge us.I love wildlife. I had a bobcat that was eating my chickens and geese so instead of killing it I got a couple outside dogs and that helped keep the bobcat and the coyotes away. So I do what I can not to kill anything but sometimes it just has to be done. I don't like it either but it needs to be that way to protect what we have. or if we let all the wild animals take over and kill all our animals then soon we will be on the streets starving and begging for food.

Hi GirlzinOK, Welcome to the Oklahoma Forum and I hope we'll hear from you often! : ) I have been gardening all my life--almost 50 years--and have NEVER had toads burrow in soil enough to kill a plant, so I am shocked that this has happened to you. Toads do like to burrow down in loose, cool soil to protect themselves from both heat and predators, so that might be what they were doing. And, I suppose there is a possibility that you had a major infestation of some kind of insects in the soil that the toads might have been trying to get to in order to eat the pests. Still, toads are a gardener's friend because they eat tons and tons of bugs, so pleae don't harm them. I am not convinced that the burrowing of the toads killed your junipers OR that they burrowing would hurt the barberries. I've had armadillos and skunks dig large, substantial burrows that a full-grown cat could have fit into and even a large burrow that size did not kill the junipers. Usually, when plants in a bed are struggling....and perhaps dying or at least looking like they are trying to die, it is most often a physiological problems like poorly draining soil, etc. So, let's try to analyze what might be going on with your plants in that particular bed. 1. Is your soil well-draining? If it is, even after a heavy rain, you would not have standing water on the soil surface for a prolonged period of time--maybe for an hour or so, but not much more than that. If your soil is slow-draining, though, you might have water stand in the bed for a day or two or three after a heavy rain. Usually, junipers CAN handle quite a lot of standing water, but some parts of Oklahoma have had wetter-than-usual years in both 2007 and 2008 and that can lead to plant death. 2.) Can you describe HOW your junipers died. Did they decline by showing browning of the foliage first and then dropping foilage? Did they die one limb at a time or did the whole plant die at once? Could you tell that the dead foliage was starting down low to the ground and moving up, or perhaps the opposite, that the upper branches died first and then the lower ones died later? Did you observe any insects on the plants? Sometimes spider mites are a problem on junipes. 3.) Grubs can be harmful, but some of them are the larval form of beneficial insects too. If you are familiar with the grub worms that eventually turn into Japanese Beetles or June Bugs, are those what you had? If so, those might have been part of the problem, but it is hard to say. I know they can be very destructive to grass roots, but I'm not sure they chew on shrub roots. 4.) Your usage of the broad-spectrum landscape and garden fungicide by Fertilome does concern me and may be the problem. If you still have the Fertilome bottle, read the label and see if the active anti-fungal ingredient is Daconil (Chlorathalonil). If so, there should be a warning label on the bottle telling you not to spray in hot and sunny weather. Why? Because Chlorathalonil and other similar fungicides can burn and kill plant foliage at temperatures over 80 degrees. (I used to say it occurred at temperatures over 90 degrees, but in our climate it seems to cause damage at "only" 80 degrees or so.) Because I have had these kinds of foliar sprays damage plants (and, yes, even kill them), I never spray ANY thing chemical on my foliage at temps over 90, and very, very rarely at temps over 80. The types of sprays that can cause damage in our hot temperatures include fungicides, summerweight horticultural oils, neem oil, organic OR checmical soap sprays, hot pepper waxes or sprays, garlic tea sprays (if very strong), etc. The types of sprays that do not cause damage (or, at least, that I never have seen cause damage in our landscape) include compost tea, manure tea, Garrett Juice, Bt sprays or Spinosad sprays. Sometimes, if you spray a fungicide on plant foliage at night or on a cloudy day, you will think that the plants were not damaged. But, you often will not see the damage begin to appear until a couple of days after you sprayed, and it can take a week or more for the full scope of the damage to become apparent. Usually, if the fungicide has burnt the foliage, the plant has about a 50-50 chance of recovery, but it can take quite a while. 5.) Another possibility is that you might have used a weed and feed product in a lawn area near your bed. If so, there is a chance that the fertilizer spreader threw some of that weed-and-feed up into the bed and the broad-leafed weedkiller is doing its job and killing the plants. A lot of people use weed and feed products near trees and shrubs because they do not understand that the broadleaf weedkiller is supposed to kill everything but grass. 6) The last possibility I can think of is that somebody somewhere, and not necessarily you or anyone else on your property, used a glyphosate weedkiller like Round-Up and it drifted into your yard and landed on your plants. This may sound far-fetched, but it happens all the time. On a windy day, Round-up and similar glyposate-type products can drift in the air for up to a mile from where they were sprayed. I've seen it happen here in our yard.....where I knew a neighbor had a field or fenceline sprayed, and a couple of days later I noticed I had glyphosate damage even though the area sprayed was hundreds and hundreds of feet from my garden. 7) Finally, sometimes the best way to figure out if something underground killed your plant is to dig up the dead plant and look at the roots. Some things to look for would include: a) Were the roots girdled? Girdling can occur if a plant stays in a container for a long time and the roots begin to grow in a circular pattern around the container. Then, when the plants are put in the ground, if you don't pull those roots apart and try to get them to spread out in different directions, the girdling-type growth continues and the plant literally chokes itself to death. b) Were the plants planted too deeply in the ground? Both trees and shrubs need to be planted so that the flare of the plant's main trunk is above ground and not buried. Planting the root flare too deeply can weaken and even kill a plant. c) Do the roots show evidence of root knot nematodes or any other nematode? If so, instead of having normal roots, you will see mis-shapen roots that have abnormal bulges and knots. d) Are the roots thin and does it seem like they part of the roots have rotted, been eaten or otherwise "gone away". Such damage could indicate too much moisture (if they rotted), animal or grub damage (if they've been eaten) or nematode damage (knots and bulges). There's a lot that can go wrong with plants, and I've tried to list everything that "could have" happened to your plants. Without seeing them, though, and not having watched them decline as you have, it is hard for me to guess long-distance what might have happened to them. I have both junipers and barberries and have never seen anything really bother them. So, think about what I wrote and let me know what you think is the most likely cause of your plant's problems. We can discuss it further, and other folks can share their ideas, and maybe if we all put our brains together, we can figure it out. Good luck, Dawn

There's a town in Arkansas named "Toad Suck." Seriously. My first assignment was at Little Rock AFB, AR. Our office secretary, Nancy, was originally from the Toad Suck. When I left in 1986, she gave me a Toad Suck Daze T-shirt at my going-away party. I still have it. I sure miss her and those good ole daze! Here is a link that might be useful: A little Toad Suck info