Ww have wild or feral hogs here in southwest Washington County Arkansas also. The first showed up about 12 years ago. Sow had a litter between the rows of hay stored outside. In 12 years they have over-run the territory. Biggest issue is the destruction of pastures and hay medows. We have trapped and either sold or butchered dozens each year for the past several years. Hunters usually bring the numbers down during deer season. But with no real natural preadators, their numbers continue to climb. For our area, the true Razorback has been extinct for a very long time. What we are seeing are domistic animals turned feral. They have migrated here or been hauled in. I live 1 mile from the national forest. Nothing between me and Fort Smith but Lee Creek. Hogs will turn feral quicker than any other animal. About 3 generations is all it takes, or less than 5 years. Had the same issue with the armidilo many years back. We would go out on a sunny warm winter day and have killed up to 30 in an afternoon. They would come out on days like that and were easy to spot in the sun shine as they dug around in the pastures. It took several years to get their numbers down enough that a man didn't have to spend a couple weeks filling holes in his hay medows. Bears arn't that big a problem here. Had a teenager tear into our Church/community building a couple of times. Game and Fish asked us to wait until spring to see if the youngster would move on, if not they would trap him. And move on he did. I still see one or two a year. Supposed to be cats here as will. I've never seen one, but others have. All in all, those hogs are the worst all the way around. More dangerous, more destructive and by far more difficult to control. Good Luck folks.....

Enjoying nature, I never have tried pruning hollies to a certain size. I let mine get to the full size and shape that they're meant to attain. You probably could prune them to any size and shape you want, but after a few years you end up with big thick branches with leaves sticking out of them and it looks unnatural unless you like tightly pruned hedges. I still can hear Neil Sperry's voice in my head on his radio show saying that if you want to prune shrubs into square green boxes, why not just go out and build a plywood box and paint it green. (grin) Who am I to defy Neil Sperry and try to prune my hollies to a certain arbitrary size? So, mine were spaced as far apart as they needed to be in the first place because I had a good idea how big they'd get and they are fine now---roughly 12' tall and 5-6' apart. Those are the Burford hollies on the south side of the house. They shade the south porch from the summer sun, which is precisely what I wanted them to do. On the east side of the house, which is where the front part of the wraparound porch and the front door is located, I planted Dwarf Burford hollies in 2011 and they seem more like the size you'd want. I wanted a naturally shorter shrub there so we could sit on the porch and look out into the yard somewhat at least. Mine have really had to struggle through drought (i think I planted them in April of 2011 and it stopped raining soon thereafter and didn't rain for 90 days that summer) so they have grown relatively slowly for hollies, but now are about 5' tall and about 3-4' wide and they haven't reached their max size yet. I expect them to top out at around 8' tall and 4' wide, but time will tell. They are a loose informal hedge, which fits with our country Victorian house....all relaxed and sort of cottagey. It is your house, though, and they are your shrubs, so you should plant what pleases you and maintain them in the way that makes you happy. I'm a firm believer that a person's landscape plantings should reflect their tastes and anyone who doesn't like it can just go mind their own business. Well, except, I still have Neil Sperry's voice in my head and I agree with his comments about picking the right shrub to begin with so you don't have to prune your shrubs to an unnatural size or shape. That's just me, though. Some people love formally pruned hedges and they should have what they want. All those years of reading Neil's newspaper columns, his magazine and his books when we lived in Texas (as well as listening to his radio show and attending his Garden Shows) trained me to be a certain way as a younger gardener, and I have his voice in my head the way I have my dad's voice in my head, even though he is long gone. Scott, We have native possumhaw hollies and I love them, but they sucker like the devil and we've got one in the front yard we're going to take out. I hate to take it out because it is the bird feeder tree where we hang the feeders, but we'll just move them somewhere else. It just suckers endlessly and I'm tired of dealing with it. We'll leave the ones on the edges of the woods because it doesn't bother us if they form thickets, and the birds love the berries in late winter and early spring, though they won't touch them until all the other berries are gone. When the cedar waxwings are migrating through in spring, they get pretty much drunk on those fermented possumhaw berries. I feel like pretty much everything we plant has one poisonous part or another, so I plant what I want. If kids are around, I keep an eye on the kids, and teach them not to eat plant parts without checking with an adult first. No child has poisoned themselves on anything we grow yet, so I try not to worry about it. (And I grow several types of brugmansias and daturas, but the spiny seed balls are so hideous that I don't think I have to worry about kids getting hold of them and accessing the seeds.) When we were kids we ran all over the neighborhood and played and we all knew to go home immediately when our parents turned on the front porch light. None of us died or ever got seriously injured or ill. It was a wonderful childhood, and we had a woodland, a neighborhood pond, rocky cliffs to climb, etc. I appreciate that we got to be kids with no one hovering over us too much. Times have changed. And, just so you know, most poisonous plant parts have a bad taste, making it less likely kids will eat them. Or, they will cause you to throw up if you ingest them, so kids are not that likely to eat and swallow them. (However, some dogs will eat anything, so that is one thing to keep in mind if you have dogs.) It is a sad commentary on life in this century that kids cannot play tag. No wonder so many children have a weight issue. It is hard to stay physically fit if you cannot do anything because you might get hurt. That is just sad. Dawn

Late summer can be a great time to observe pit vipers that are held up under rookery rocks incubating and birthing their offspring. Ryan and I made a trip on Sept. 1st to do just this. Below is a report of our trip taken from Ryan's website ( http://www.thies-times.com/serpentryan/homepage.html ) followed by photos by myself. Mike Cravens and I had a hankering to find a timber rattlesnake or two. We headed over to a place in Montgomery County Missouri. Almost immediately we were greeted with a very lovely find. Mike got a hand on my first ever western slender glass lizard. After the photo session we continued. Not too long after that I spotted an adult copperhead in a rock crevice. Mike came over to take a look himself and pointed out the four juvenile copperheads that also shared the crevice. Apparently upon picture comparison, I found the same adult copperhead on May 3, 2003 under a nearby rock. Once the photo session was over we continued. While checking a crevice, Mike flipped a juvenile hog-nosed snake. We took our photos and moved on. The last find occurred just as it was getting dark. Mike peered into a crevice and saw yet another adult copperhead. Also present were several neonate sheds. As Mike continued to look for more snakes, I poked around the edge of the crevice. Moments later I scared up a neonate copperhead in the process of shedding its skin. I called Mike over and I got my pictures. That proved to be the last snake of the day. It was a fantastic outing. The totals were 7 osage copperheads and 1 eastern hog-nosed snake. A total of 8 snakes. Mike

@Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR I so agree on the less is more. Of course this doesn't apply to every situation, but earlier this year I was concerned because I think I burned some of my bands with too much manure. It was recommended to me to add such and such to fix it (I can't remember the remedies now) but I got too busy with the kids and the rest of the garden and I just forgot about it. Well, the roses recovered all on their own without any extra care, and they've put forth lots of healthy and beautiful new growth. I'm a lazy gardener who is not really willing to pamper anything, so they're just going to have to get by with minimal special attention 🤷‍♀️