Hi Catherine: No bird feeders in my yard (except hummingbirds). I learned a long time ago that with bird feeders you end up with sunflowers, thistles, etc. growing wherever the birds drop them. By mouth or the other end. Only thing I can figure is I feed my cats dry food in the sunroom. Maybe it smelled it though the screen. Sandy: My first co-op job in high school was a typist at St. Stephens School. Being my first job my mom made me wear a white blouse, black skirt and nylons. Sister Mary Rita Mae the science teacher had a pet raccoon that she would let run around the room for exercise. While I was typing notes for her she let Bandit out of his cage. He ran across the room and bit me on my knee. It broke the skin and ruined my nylons. When I got home and told my mom she was more upset over my ruined nylons (they were expensive back then) than she was the bite. To this day I am terrified of raccoons and they seem to sense it. Before I leave for work I put all my work stuff on the side step, feed the fish, pull the car out, load it up and I'm on my way. One time last year after feeding the fish I reached down to close the garage door and saw something come running at me from around the side of the garage. It was a huge raccoon. I jumped into the car, slammed the door shut and pulled down the drive. The darn raccoon chased my car all the way down the drive. Whenever I tried to get out of the car it would try to get in. Of course my cell phone was in my purse on the side step. I was trapped in my car for about 1/2 hour till the raccoon got tired of this game and left. I was late for work and so shook up I almost blew chunks on drive to work. Now in the summertime I carry shake cans with me in the morning to throw at any raccoons that may be in the yard. I just seems like I am a magnet to sick raccoons. Maybe I have a certain aura about me. I like to bicycle down in the valley. Two weeks ago after descending the hill of the entrance to the park I was waiting to cross the road. Everyone on the all purpose trail had stopped what they were doing and were pointing behind me. I turned around only to see a raccoon charging me. I hopped on my bike and rode away. The next day after I finished my hour ride I decided to sit on a picnic table by the river and watch the Canada geese swim. I saw the grass move on the bank and thought it was a fisherman. Here comes a raccoon running straight at me. I had a towel around my neck and grabbed it and flicked it at the raccoon. All my other stuff was on the picnic table next to me (cell phone, water bottle, fanny pack). Didn't that darn raccoon stand up on it's hind legs and hiss at me. It grabbed the towel. It wouldn't back down. I slid all my stuff into the fanny pack, got on my bike and took off. It may have been the same raccoon. When I got to the parking lot there was an elderly couple. The gentleman told me something was wrong with that raccoon because they are noctural and shouldn't be out in broad daylight. Of course my family makes fun of me cuz the raccoons never bother me when anyone else is around. They think it's a "figment of my imagination." I guess it's the price I must pay for being a ponder and living down the street from the Metroparks. The pond is a big attraction for them. Jenny

Lou thanks for contributing the compost information. I know that Cornmeal is very effective when applied to the 'Palmetto' St Augustine grass. My son inlaw tried the fertilizer chemicals the first year, and was not very happy with the result, The next fall the Cornmeal applied like you suggested and horse manure compost applied later showed a dramatic improvement over the chemical fertilizer/weed killer he used first. The virgin clay soil that was on the lot where my daughter's house was build was nearly white hardpan. And then I saw that their builder only layed down sand as a topsoil. That really stressed me, because I know the light color I saw in her clay soil must indicate that it must be nearly void of humus and also void of many important nutrients that trees and shrubs need. Because of that we made the landscaping beds with well processed horse manure compost, and when he applied that same compost and at the right time put down the cornmeal, my son-in-law ended up with one of the nicest looking yards and landscaping on the block. Too bad they moved back to OK the next year, and no longer can enjoy that. I say that, because now most of the yards in our area are full of that horrible weed called bermuda grass. Too bad the 'Palmetto' ST Augustine grass is not hardy enough for our borderline USDA Zone 6b/7a I have a friend who's Bermuda grass is worse than mine at invading, and even after we covered some of her lawn, for a new landscaping bed, with black plastic for 6 weeks in the hottest part of the summer, the Bermuda's roots still are not killed. We looked under the plastic this week and saw lots of thick white roots with hints of green barely showing. What a pain. I just simply hate Bermuda grass. The only good thing; is that even if it goes dormant in a drought most Bermuda will not die out, and in the next warm rainy season it flourishes again. For Lawns that is great. For Landscape beds that is nothing more than a huge weedy burden. Now, for my friend's new landscape bed, I know of no other choice than to spray the area with a grass root killer that will not harm the roses and thornless dwarf hawthorn tree and some shrubs we want to plant next week in that new bed. As far as my above advice to Mike, I did not want to advise him to make the soil in his oak tree's bed extra fertile until he gets his bermuda roots under control. If he does make the tree's bed nice and fertile before then, with the organic stuff you mentioned, The Bermuda will simply send down even deeper roots and take a stronger hold in the bed, resulting in the roots stealing most of those composted organic nutrients away from the tree's rootball. Since the tree is already stressed, many pests which drop and spend the winter in the soil do not like the oils in cedar. That is why I suggested Mike use it. Not so much to break down and feed the tree, but to instead help retain soil moisture, and to retard the pests which otherwise might want to emerge from the soil and attack this tree that is currently struggling to establish. Mike, once your bermuda is under better control, then by all means do all you can to follow Lou's advice on the organic spreads. And when your tree is more healthy, you can begin to use the faster breaking down mulches Lou mentioned, because by then the health of the tree should help discourage more of such opportunist pests from rushing in.

You have a nice house with curb appeal. Your job is to make the house look like something people want to buy, and I think you need to work on making it seem more spacious. People buy space when they buy a house. Wallpaper makes a room look smaller, and I could not believe how true this was till we removed our wallpaper in a redecorating job. The rooms looked so much bigger without wallpaper. I also think you should go neutral with the paint when you repaint the walls and use the same wall colors in rooms that look into each other (dining room, hall and living room, maybe kitchen too). Using the same wall color this way also makes the place look bigger. The other thing that makes your living room look small is the large sectional that you have there. This too large, over stuffed furniture in small rooms only makes the rooms look even smaller than they are. You are selling space, so work to make the house look more spacious.

@Polypom @Rina Thanks for giving me a hint for the species, as well as sharing the pics of your plants! You're right, mine have no spines nor prickly parts whatsoever, and they aren't near as thick or rigid as yours look. I had never seen this type of plant, and only bought it because I thought it was neat. Maybe I bought the genetically inferior result of some mad botanist's cross-breeding experiments? :-x As for sunlight and etiolation, I honestly don't think that's it because I've been growing my A. Subulata in the same conditions as my other succulents, same July - October sunlight on my back porch. In fact, they were all sitting in a row on the same porch railing throughout most of this. I typically use the "finger dipstick" test to determine when I should water, but I've kept these plants dry for the most part. Maybe they get watered once every 6 - 10 days at most? The plants pictured below in the black plastic containers are the ones I bought at the same time from the flea market lady (this was dated 7/18/2015), with the baby A. Subulata in the middle. It's a blurry camera pic, but I'm pretty sure I had 5 - 6 of the plants in that pot when I started. ...and these are those same plants now, with the little black container for reference. I'm pretty sure I used the same Miracle Gro "Cactus, Palm, & Citrus potting mix", for these, but it's possible I cut it with Fox Farms Ocean Forest potting soil (I probably did for the big cactus just due to the size of the pot). I know that's not ideal for a desert plant, but surely poor drainage / incorrect perlite mixture would have made my babies pictured above look like this sickly baby pictured below! Maybe A. Subulata is more finicky or sensitive to something in this N.C. weather? I repotted all of those flea market plants the day after I bought them...I didn't know that A. Subulata was many plants, so I was surprised when they all came apart in my hand when I pulled them out. One of the A.Subs died within a couple of weeks of me re-potting, but I chalked that up to my novice plant-handling skills. The others held on, but then started doing the "loch ness monster" dip/grow back up/dip more/grow up/die cycle since maybe late August or so?. That's why I suspected disease or pests, just because it took so long for them to start declining...but maybe they hated that soil, and it's just taken them this long to say "I give up" and die? @Asclepiad_Fan I didn't see what my mom did with it on a day-to-day basis when she owned it, but it always stayed in a pot either on the back porch (wooden, 2nd story off of the ground) or inside in a window sill in the winter. Honestly, it's always had some form of scarring and it's only gotten worst as time went on (summer or indoors!). Anyways, here's some pics in bright sunlight (maybe it will show something that my previous rainy-day pics don't?) This is the front, where there is less scarring visible: This is the back, which looks worse: And here is a close-up of the off-shoot: even its base is showing that same scarring! Not sure if it matters, but this guy has always had more spider webs on it since I assumed ownership and re-potted it. Some mornings, I would see one - two threads on the other succulents, but this guy has always consistently more inside of his pot compared to the other porch-rail succulents. Is it because it's a bigger pot / firm spines make better anchor points and the spiders look for that? Or, maybe I do have some spider-mite like pest? It sure looks like something has been sucking this poor dude dry his whole life...