Oh Those cheeky muffins!!! Up to No-Good-nics I'd say! I must have a pair hiding around my yard...I'm sure they are responsible for the items that go missing around here...now where did I set those pruners down....found a year later all nice and rusty!!!

Good Morning, Everyone! Thank you all for the "welcome back". I missed each and every one of you. Stormy here today on this Good Friday. Dark and a bit chilly out. Good weather for gardens though. Glad for the rain though. We've had high temps and high, dry winds this past week and wildfires every day. Nothing close to here, but close enough that I could smell the smoke. My dogs erupted in chorus with every firetruck that passed by over on the highway.(hehehe). I took pictures of the gardens on the 31st. Glad I did, as the hot, dry winds dried out all the pretty yellow Jonquils later that day. Blasted hot winds ruined them before our Easter Sunday family picnic and egg hunt. They were magnificent in chorus with the yellow forsythias, white Bridle's Wreath, and Redbud trees now in full bloom all over the garden. My beloved Jane Magnolia is breathtakingly beautiful this year and smells so wonderful. I planted out some Orange Perfection Phlox yesterday. Tried them last year, but they didn't make it. This rain may ensure these do. I dug around in the bin at the store until I found one, just one package with moist peat inside. Holding it up to to sunlight, I could just make out something possibly alive in that dark green plastic bag. Makes me mad to pay five bucks for dead rootstock. They are not the best looking root stocks I ever saw, but think they will make it. I only need one to survive to establish a nice clump this year for next year's blooms. I also planted a package of purple Liatris and a package of Freesia bulbs for summer blooms. I love the smell of Freesia. Yummy. All the Peonies are up and beginning to make tiny flower buds. Hopefully the red ones and deep magenta ones will bloom this year too. If they do, it will be their first time. Some deer came into the yard this winter and ate the top branches off the one surviving River birch sapling, but it is recovering nicely now. I caged it with a tomato cage and for now they are leaving it alone. They are "camped" up on the hill, hiding in wait for my juicy, delicious roses to start blooming, no doubt. :[ I've been taking the dogs for walks up there every morning and hopefully their pee and poop will make them think twice about coming any closer to the back yard. My English Shepherd could easily take down a whitetail deer. DH said this weekend he would finish stretching field fence around on the inside of the existing barbed wire fencing to keep out critters. That won't keep deer out, but it will keep our dogs in, so we can let them run loose on the property. That will be great. They need the exercise and I need them to do their job protecting the place. They love it, too. Hopefully the raccoons & coyotes will take the hint. Keep Out! Anyhow, so far so good. Gotta go check on my chicks. They poopy up their water really fast and will be ready for breakfast. :) Talk to you guys later. ~Annie

AM, I have an Excalibur, it's a great machine. I use mine for jerky, for dehydrating garlic, chopped onions and herbs, for apple slices, for making "gummy worms" out of zucchini. I dehydrate zucchini for soup too, and Elery dries a lot of hot peppers. We used a mix of dried peppers and herbs and made our own chili powder this year and if I get a bunch of morel mushrooms or even find mushrooms on sale, I'll stick them into the dehydrator to keep on hand. I threw some morels into the food processor after they were dried, ground them to powder and added salt for a "morel salt". It added a nice flavor when I didn't really have enough mushrooms to make anything else. I've not been happy with a couple of items. Like you, I've found that bananas just stay chewy and sticky and no one in my family will eat them, the consistency is just bad. I've dried tomatoes for tomato powder but they never seem to get crisp enough to powder. If I put them in the food processor and "powder" them, they just solidify into one giant brick. Ugh. A waste of time and product for me. Dried watermelon wasn't exactly my best idea either, LOL. The kids love this "zucchini candy", though, and no one ever knows that it's zucchini. I got the recipe from Linda Lou at Harvest and it's not exactly healthy with sugar and koolaid, but it's probably better than gummy worms. BASIC ZUCCHINI CANDY FRUIT 10 cups peeled diced zucchini 1/2 inch cubes or "worms" 3 cups water 2 pkgs. unsweetened Koolaid 2 1/2 cups sugar Peel zucchini,cut in half, removing seeds. Dice in cubes. Mix the liquid syrup together. Add zucchini. Bring to a boil and them simmer for 25 min. Drain. Put on dehydrator trays. Dry 14 hours at 125 degrees. Turn pieces over and dry another 4 hours. This will feel dry and not sticky when done. Store in jars or other tightly sealed containers.If you dip in sugar when you turn them, they will be more like "gum drops" on the outside. PINEAPPLE CANDY FRUIT You can do the same thing with the zucchini but use : 48 oz. pineapple juice 2 T. pineapple extract 2 1/2 cups sugar 1/4 cup lemon juice BLUEBERRY CANDY FRUIT 10 cups peeled, cut zucchini, about 1/2 inch cubes 1 -16 oz. can wild blueberries ( mashed and strained through cheese cloth) 1 qt. fresh blueberries ( mashed and strained through cheese cloth) 1 cup water 2 cups sugar 1/2 cup lemon juice ( optional) Follow the directions for basic recipe. HINTS: When turning your zucchini, dip in sugar to coat them, making them more like "gumdrops". Or you could make fruit leather, kids always seem to like those. Annie This post was edited by annie1992 on Sun, Jan 26, 14 at 19:23

Bestyears, I was keeping it vague because discussing dog training methods can be equal to politics! Try telling some of the militant rescue groups that you will be using a different training method than the one they strictly follow ... you will never get a dog from them! Here are two articles from two opposite theories that gives you an idea of how they think. 1) https://positively.com/victorias-blog/balanced-dog-training-theres-nothing-balanced-about-it/ 2) https://www.nitrocanine.com/blog/2015/06/12/in-defense-of-balanced-training/ With my rescue I started out with a purely positive trainer. It worked great in the house and yard as the dog is very food motivated ... BUT outside none of the training made a difference. Critters and the chase were a much higher reward than anything I could offer. I even tried carrying filet mignon! I was being dragged around town by a crazy dog ... even with the easy-walk harness the positive trainer told me to buy. The dog just walked sideways and pushed into the harness. The last straw was when on a walk the dog nearly knocked me, and my father, to the ground when trying to get a squirrel. I had to kick the dog to stop her lunging and get us untangled (my Dad also had our smaller dog on leash). I looked for a different approach and found "balanced" training. The trainer I found is slightly different from #2 above in that they do use food rewards. Happy to message you a link to the training program website and the actual trainer I used. We now go on off leash hikes and I get stopped regularly by people who comment on her behavior and level of training. I got so many questions that I started carrying business cards for the trainer!! One of those people actually contacted and used my trainer, even thought she isn't local. Do your research and choose the trainer and method that best works for you and your dog. The best method will most likely be a combination of several different ones.