Dave: 1. I'm not the only one who grows blueberries around here, but yes, I have grown them for quite a few years with pretty good success. They are one of our favorite and most versatile fruits, easy to freeze and the best pie fruit save for apricots in my view. For most of those years, I have grown northern highbush -- varieties like Blueray, Patriot, Bluecrop, and Jersey -- but lately have added rabbiteye and southern highbush types. In Iowa, you will be growing northern highbush because your winter is different from mine. 2. I was raised at Clinton in eastern Iowa, and our soil was rich and deep, but the Ph practically neutral because of large amounts of limestone in the soil. If the Ph of your soil is in the higher range, your will have to lower it to 5 or below to grow good blueberries. Blueberries need large amounts of iron, which becomes available only in soils that are acidic. The natural soil Ph here in northern Virginia is a little over 6, and I always mix in large amounts of spaghnum peat moss when planting, as well as significant handfuls of elemental sulphur to keep the Ph down. I have also used iron sulphate extensively, but can't find that any more at my local sources. After planting, I mulch the blueberries heavily every winter to provide a continuous source of humus and protect against summer dry spells, another great enemy of blueberries. Is early spring, I fertilize a little with pure ammonium sulphate, which maintains the low acidity. Nitrogen from nitrate sources should not be used on blueberries. 3. Crabjoe is right about the stable manure, which I have been hauling for many years. Just unloaded load #10 today around the blackberries and raspberries. Expect to get to about 35 loads before I quit unless the back yard becomes too wet for the pickup. After a year, you can't recognize this stuff as stable manure, since it all turns to soft black humus, and in the meantime makes a nice, moisture-conserving mulch. Stable manure is about as clean a soil amendment as you can find, and pathogen free. 4. I do grow peaches, but they are freestones and not the pickling kind. Pickles might be made from the very firm old clingstone varieties. I do make pickles though, and put up 16 quarts of old fashioned lime soak bread and butter pickles last summer, made from cukes. That's a hell of a lot of pickles, and about all we can handle in that department. Peaches go into the freezer sliced, with a little sugar for preservation, in ziplock bags. By the end of the summer the freezer is pretty full, and we try to have it cleared out by spring. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

It seems to me that I've had every single tomato problem on the planet in this first garden of mine! I have clearly done something very wrong, I guess, but one Cherokee purple has three of the largest tomatoes I've ever seen in my life on it - and they're still getting bigger! - and my two sickly Homesteads are already loaded up with over 40 tomatoes between the two of them, so I guess I haven't completely ruined everything, lol. Anyway, my problems.... I have a yellow pear that is planted alongside a Mr. Stripey and a Cherokee Purple. The yellow pear looks all spindly and the leaves are tiny. They aren't the shoe string leaves I've seen for one virus (CMV?), they're just really tiny. The other two plants in that bed look fine. They were all just put in the bed a couple weeks ago. My other problem is that another Cherokee Purple in a different bed is growing beautifully, but just in the last 10 days I noticed some of the leaves started getting a purplish/black tint along the edges and some mottling of the same color here and there on the leaves. Aside from some pretty serious blossom drop for the last couple weeks, the plant has been doing fairly well for an amateur, I think. It only has 4 tomatoes on it, but they're all pretty big and the latest blossoms seem to be hanging on tight. The leaves don't have any yellowing and don't look burned/brown at all - just purple/black mottling and edges on a few of them. Is this something I should be concerned about? (I never know - my husband thinks I worry too much about every little spot.)

This is humiliating!! I am looking over my posts and shaking my head over the editing. I'm a fifth grade teacher!! I hope my student don't ever see them. (They never will!) I really appreciate your advice and am contemplating buying a new camera to post pics. Very frustrating. I feel like a mouch; I gawk at everyone else's photos and can't share my own. I'll get it straitened out! Thyme- I have a wheeled tool and then nippers. These are two seperate tools. Is this what you meant? I also have a wet saw since I tile (not mosaic) floors, showers, counter tops, staris, etc. So I think I will give it a try with my wheel scorer and make it look haphazard and random on the glazed tile. I have been working on this gigantic, intricate urn to be made into a fountain since mother's day and I am making my self finish it before I start anything else. And I want to start on some other stuff!!!!!!!!! Problem is I have two of these urns and want them done exactly the same. I WILL finish my urn this week...and save the other one for the winter. Gotta get a camera!!

I've been taking Meloxicam as needed for years. DH has taken it for his knee now. I think it is great, but I take it only when I need it. I take Aleve for a minor need and save Meloxicam for times I need more and especially when I want that 24 hr continuity. I think that consistent relief can really help more than a shorter term med since I tend to forget to take another dose until I'm really hurting again -- you get into that yo-yo of pain that makes it harder to make any real improvement. When I do take the Meloxicam, it is usually only 1 or 2 days and very rarely more than a week. You don't want to take more of any NSAID than you really need, but I don't hesitate to take it when I need it. Saw your question about taking it daily -- it is a once a day and when you start it, you may need to take it everyday for a few days or more to get the relief you need so that you can stop taking it for a while. Like hcbm said -- you don't want to let pain get too far out in front of you or keep coming back at you because it gets harder to bring it back under control if it gets away from you. But if you only need to take it once and can go without it for days or a week or more, you don't need to take it every day. If you skip a day and need to take it again, try taking it a few days in a row. You wind up figuring out your own rhythm and how to read what your body needs.