This ain't exactly a lawn where I live. It used to be a cow field. We just built houses and started mowing. This ground is good and solid. I mow it with a 1949 8N tractor (with ag-bar tires) and a finish mower. Having cows walk all over it is the least of my worries. No chickens except what he has in a pen up at his barn. He keeps about 5 chickens just for the eggs everyday. If I fence off the area of fruit trees that leaves about an acre for the cows. And it still leaves up plenty of yard space. If it were entirely up to me I would fence the whole place off and let the cows have the run of the whole lot. Front yard and all. The cows sometimes manage to get out of the ditch and up into the yard. They are not any trouble, but we live on a sometimes busy road. The fence is only to keep them in the yard and out of the road. There would only be 6 to 8 cows at a time at the most. Maybe I'm just blind to the flys. I don't encounter then when I'm near the cows. And to me they don't smell. And the fields don't smell. Or maybe I'm just so used to it I don't pay attention to it. We're gonna discuss it more today with the cow man. Thanks for the advice. Keep it coming. Pooh Bear

Hi Laura, I was trying to remember whether we tried Liquid Fence there or not, so I asked my husband. He thinks we probably didn't try it, as, as he believes the non-vegetarian racoons would probably find the stinky rotten egg smell attractive, the same way they like Fish emulsion. But we've not tried it, so I can't say for certain that it wouldn't work. You can use bone meal successfully, Laura. You just have to keep it at the bottom of the planting hole, not up, say, to within 6 or 8 inches of the top. We put a lot at the very bottom of all of our holes and have only had the digging problem with the one new planter where I think we added some a little closer to the top. Compost ought to work out really well for your roses and anything else you want to grow wherever you want to put it--in the holes and on top too. You don't have to go the extra step to make compost tea and carry around that heavy water if you don't want to; if you just scatter it on top of the mulch when it rains off and on, the compost will gradually dissolve into the ground and the plants will be able to gradually use its nutrients that way just fine. (Note: this method depends on leaving your mulch in place on top of the ground, and replenishing it with more mulch on top of that as it becomes necessary. The partially depleted mulch contains the nitrogen the new mulch will need to begin the breakdown process all over again without having to take much from the soil to accomplish that.) I'd not personally recommend the use of non-organic fertilizers, as their use changes the natural balance of the soil's microbia. Plants have evolved over the centuries to coexist with and benefit from the naturally-occurring soil organisms, not a soil whose microbia have become wildy unbalanced. I briefly used superphosphate (in the Dark Ages) on my rhododendrons until reading a research-based article about the long-range unhealthy soil effects of using superphosphate. Plants will be much healthier in the long run if you can use only organic fertilizers like compost. To take for example the plants we've had the longest experience with, our rhododendrons absolutely love cottonseed meal, judging from their generous, gorgeous blooming on reasonably healthy plants (with no spray at all) for the past 35 years. We haven't used regular commercial fertilizers of any kind anywhere in our yard, including superphosphate, for all that time. We just throw cottonseed meal out on top of the mulch and let it get washed down into the soil with the rain. It gradually decomposes, consistently furnishing its nutrients to the rhododendrons. In noticing our large healthy rhododendrons, surprised people around here have said that they can't grow rhododendrons in their own yards, including even some landscapers who ought to know how to grow them. But the key is in the soil health and that's the difference in what we do compared to what they tried that didn't work. Organically based stuff is all you ever need to successfully grow rhododendrons; anything else, like commercial regular fertilizers, sets the plant up for diseases to a much more crippling extent than it would likely have had to deal with in a natural setting. Since starting with roses, we've put lots of good organic stuff into the planting holes, but cottonseed meal and banana peels are the main thing they'll ever get on the top, other than tree leaves and mulch. It seems to work well for roses thus far; our roses were heavily budded up this spring and looking quite healthy until Rose Rosette Disease swept through the yard. Regarding your dog, well, if he/she starts barking wildly after dark, you might get out your flashlight and take a look in the front yard. We've done that a few times, and sure enough, there was a racoon. We gave up bothering to fuss at the racoon, though, since we noticed it had no effect whatsoever. They might saunter off a little, but as soon as you go back inside, they come right back. They don't seem to care the least bit what people think of their digging! Pesky little critters... Well, good luck with your critters. Best wishes, Mary

Problem continues. I put some mulch near what I think is the spot and poured some hot water there (a suggestion I got somewhere on the internet). I think he moved a few inches and I think he tunnels under the house enough to slip in.--Couldn't put moth balls in the walls, possibly nearby on the outside. Positive this is not in my computer, just a little critter who would be okay if he would just move somewhere else. Thanks for your responses. I will keep on trying. More suggestions will be welcome. theo

Dorothy, I am so jealous that I am just green with envy. : ) Birds are all over the place in great profusion, but so far we've had not a peep from the frogs! Well, I think they made a little noise one day in January when we went to 77 degrees, but I knew that was a fluke, and haven't heard from them since. When we first moved here, we loved to fall asleep with the bedroom windows open so we could listen to the frogs that were down at the big pond, which is several hundred feet from the house. Then, we built the lily pond in the back yard, and we had to close the windows in order to sleep because the chorus of singing frogs would keep us awake at night. I love listening to them, but just not when there's a million of them outside the bedroom window singing all night long. My favorites are the little tree frogs. They often attach themselves to the windows of the house, and also hang out in flower pots and plants on the patio. The only tree frog I'm not crazy about is the one that sounds like a woman screaming off in the distance. That one disturbs me. The first time I heard it, I was just positive there really was a woman screaming off in the distance. It took me a long time to accept that the screaming woman was only a frog. I did unearth a toad in the garden the other day, and spent the next 20 minutes trying to avoid stepping on it. Every step I took, it was right there under my feet. Dawn