Shucks, yagottalove the squirrels! I find them HIGHLY ENTERTAINING -- especially when they're chasing each other through the high oak limbs in some mating ritual (usually more than one male fighting over a female) and one of them -- PLOP -- drops out of the tree almost ON TOP of you, like one did to me a month or two ago... and my little Tater Tot (half chihuahua/half Jack Russell, ALL WOUND UP) was only about 20 feet away, and took off like a RIFLE SHOT after that stunned squirrel which just BARELY made it back up the tree before TT got to him, lol. Tater Tot routinely runs out the back door and makes a BEELINE for where he THINKS the squirrels are (and sometimes I watch him RUN RIGHT PAST where they ACTUALLY ARE, lol)... Then when they get up in the tree, he sits on the ground and looks at them and barks and barks and barks! Cats, too! Back when I was still silly enough to put up bird feeders the squirrels could DESTROY, I occassionally would SHOOT a squirrel who had destroyed one... Made me feel bad, so I started putting up squirrel-proof feeders and/or ones they couldn't reach, and also occasionally some ears of dry corn for THEM and made my peace. Things are better that way. Now chipmunks -- Sooooo cute, UNTIL you have a dozen or so living in your back yard... THEN they're another story -- they'll tunnel into your house (or come in through the dryer vent), dig all kinds of ankle-breaking holes in your yard... So long as you have A CAT or DOG in your yard, you're OK... But the 8 years we didn't have one, it was IMPOSSIBLE... I HAD to start trapping and relocating them! Jeff

Word can not describe how beautiful everyone's creations have been. I finally opened mine today and let me tell you, we had another great match-up. My husband and I are remodeling our kitchen and it is now in different tones of green and blue. My gift from FIDDLEKATE fits right in. I've tried to take some pictures of it, but it is pretty dark in my kitchen right now. I will try to take some better pictures tomorrow and place them on Photobook. Katie also included some cut glass, marbles and some new sleeves for my running pliers. I was so excited to unwrap each of her gifts. Thank you Katie and happy New Year to you all you lovely ladies. Amie

I have been there! We just finished a bathroom remodel after our tub chipped/cracked (not taking any chances with the horrific experiences we've had so far). It took so much longer than I thought, it included one of my really long weeks at work followed by an out of town conference, and any time I had off was spent on the couch trying to be conspicuously occupied or out of the house doing whatever I could think of. I sooooo just wanted one lazy day lounging in my pajamas reading in peace! Even the daily progress checks went from exciting little bits of progress to inventories of everything left. Hang in there! Is there anything you can schedule time for that you really enjoy doing? Lunch with a friend? Massage? Quiet afternoon in a corner of the local library? I hope you get the dream kitchen you want, it will all be worth it! I am having immense fun obsessively researching stuff for our kitchen remodel, but DH is still psychologically scarred from having all the people here for weeks for the bathroom project. And he spends much more time in the kitchen than I do. Might be a year before we can think about actually starting.

Hi all. I take care of a university biology department's collection of plants here in Connecticut and have grown citrus at home for over forty years. My take on the above issues follows. First, my Meyer lemons that get a good dose of cold before I move them inside (this year around Halloween) often drop many of their leaves and then soon break out into the same kind of flowering cycle seen on the second plant. They are more prone to dropping most of their leaves in November than any of the other citrus I care for. Next, when the tip of a branch begins to die back as in the photo, you should use a sharp pair of secateurs (sterilized in bleach solution) and prune it back to green wood just above a leaf node ASAP. Leaving the dying tip is only causing more tissue to die. Next, I think both the plant that shed all its leaves in a week and the one that consists of just a single stem are in pots that are much too large for them, especially given that they are in regular potting soil and seem to be in cool home environments without a great deal of sunlight. The single-stemmed plant would probably be quite happy in a five inch diameter pot. Over-potting makes the cooler conditions the plants encounter in the fall and indoors more likely to cause root rot which can kill a citrus tree quite quickly (I've done it to a couple of my own trees: they drowned). The test I'd do is to get them out of their pots and see if there are a decent number of roots spreading through most of the soil. If a plant that has been in a container for several months is lifted from the pot and when this is done large gobs of soil simply fall away, that's a good reason to put the plant into a smaller container. There's no good rule for this, but I'll note that most of my older citrus (15 to 30 years old) are in containers that are about 1/3 as high and 1/3 as wide as the plants. A typical example: I have a Key lime in an 11 inch wide and 10 inch tall pot (with soil to within three inches of the top and an inch of bark chips on top of that). The Key Lime has a 1 inch diameter trunk at the base and is roughly 2.5 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall. Soil considerations. At home, I long used regular brands of potting soil picked up at Home Depot (non-moisture control) with success for decades but then had a bad experience when I used a more expensive brand from a garden center that had too much ability to hold water--the bottom of two pots turned to mud. In the aftermath of that experience, I researched my options. For what it is worth, I've adopted the following mix at the greenhouse: 1/2 Al's Gritty Mix plus 1/2 ProMix BX. Al's Gritty Mix consists of three ingredients 1/3 Turface (the stuff used on baseball infields), 1/3 Grani-grit (rough granite chips for chickens to grind their food in their gizzards), and 1/3 fine bark mulch. I do not sift or sieve any of these things but simply pull out any overly large bits of wood from the bark mulch or mix if I see them. I found that Al's mix alone drained and dried out far too quickly in the greenhouse. You can obviously vary the amounts or omit one of the Al's ingredients and still have a much better mix than what you'll buy at Home Depot. A cactus might get 1/3 ProMix BX and 2/3s Al's, etc. I use the 1/2 and 1/2 mix for most succulents and cacti, including Desert Roses. Oh, and I've found that covering the soil surface with larger bark chips is a great way to reduce the fungus gnat population, but that problem is also helped by shifting to a mix that has less peat in it or by NOT repotting your plants just prior to bringing them in for the winter (the fungus gnats are particularly attracted to new potting soil with its fresh peat).