Hi Daria, what varieties of garlic do you sually plant? I planted a small amount of "Spanish Roja" last fall for the first time, it didnt get as large as i thought it might but it did "ok." this fall i will plant it in an area that gets more sun, and i will amend the soil more with compost/organic material. i was also confused as to watering,fertilizing etc etc etc also for this area, i found a lot of good info about that stuff on the G & H Garlic site, they are located in Littleton, NH. I will also be planting other varieties besides the "Spanis Roja" next fall, fresh garlic is starting to show up at local farmers markets, so i'll probably use some of that for seed this fall also.

spedigrees: They do look sort of like gigantic bumblebees, there's just something endearing about them (probably the only moth I can say that about). Jane: Does that chipmunk have a short tail or is it just the angle? I've noticed that I have at least two different chippies visiting my deck; one with a short tail and one with a long tail. I'd thought that maybe a predator had bitten off the tip of the short tail, but it could be genetic. The squirrels here come in two types - one type has a regular full tail, the other has a skinny tail (evolving into a rat?) Guthrie has been quiet lately. Possibly he noticed that I've moved all of the defoliated phlox to a new Phlox Protection Zone, fenced to keep him out. There's one phlox blooming there that he missed. Claire (trying out the new GW photo uploading feature. I just edited and rearranged my post and had to re-enter the photo file) Phlox Protection Zone

Glad it worked. Yes, knock wood, every one in my care survived, quantity of 20-something. Know a lady, a retired science teacher, who raises them every summer. She ties a string to the green chrysalis's silk and loops it around a little wooden tree on her kitchen table. That way, because this goes on for several months, when she has coffee in the morning, she can see who turned clear over night. Some hatch in her kitchen and she guides them gently to the outside. Her success rate is very, very high and she does a hundred or more every year. If a chrysalis is damaged, things may not go well. If the proboscis doesn't unfurl, life is short. Mine always turned clear with a sunrise. If it was too windy or raining, it stayed on my porch till the weather was just right. If I recall correctly, they don't eat for many hours after hatching and live for about 4 weeks - mating about one week after birth. Wilbur would have mated here and his offspring is the group that would have migrated. Not having an abundant supply of milkweed is changing everything. Picture is Moses on his first flower (artifcial because that is what his chrysalis was attached to) Ok. TMI, probably, but it is fascinating to me. Yes, they were all named and recorded. 100% success rate is lucky! 0% success with raising milkweed isn't. Jane

Hi BigDogLover, I'll be sure to get a picture to you at some point when it's done. I'm really excited for how well it'll turn out (Lord willing). The whole thing about pine being soft is an over-generalization. What I've been told is that while we take all species of wood (and there are tons - to name a few of the most popular: white oak, red oak, walnut, ash, beech, maple, cypress, white pine, yellow pine, alder, elm, cherry, hickory, birch, teak, mahogany, cedar, ETC.) and split all those many species into only two categories - hardwoods and softwoods - that it's not nearly so black-and-white; that is to say, there is a much more gradient scale between hard and soft. There are several different species of pine out there, some of which are quite hard -- and southern yellow pine (often referred to as just "yellow pine" or "southern pine") is one of the hard ones (it's over twice as hard as eastern white pine, which is what most people are picturing in their mind when thinking of easily-dented "soft pine"). When people start poo-pooing pine, I tell them what I just told you, and I remind them that the entire framing structure of a house is pine, and pine has been used for flooring and exterior siding and lots of other uses for centuries, and holds up very very well (if maintained properly, which applies to almost any wood). The floors in my house, which was built in 1938, are southern yellow pine (it was at that time, and still is now, very abundant and thus affordable), have never been refinished or really even maintained, and they look great. If I look half this good when I'm 70, it'll be worth drinking to. By "hack traditional", I'm referring to a pet peeve of mine whereby fast-talking sharp-accent rich folks from New York and New Jersey and Michigan and the like, move here to the South - and then, with zero regard to tradition or rural identity or historical integrity - they build a huge modern house that clashes with all the antebellum and mill-era homes that make up the traditional Southern landscape - and they think it's "Southern" because it has a wraparound porch. I'm talking about the people that weren't born or raised here by parents born and raised here - the people who have no real understanding of the fact that this is a region of the larger nation which has its own cultural and architectural identity which ought to be faithfully preserved. The people who see the South simply as a warm, relaxed, "country" sort of place to be exploited and built-up. I find it offensively condescending that rather than seeing me and where I come from as a distinct culture that ought to be respected, that we're viewed as a commodity that can be marketed (I'm picturing that "Luzianne authentic Southern iced tea" TV commercial with the disembodied ceiling fans, and Cracker Barrel, and my blood's about to boil). People don't seem to grasp that everyone with a high-stress job in some dirty city up north wants to come to the warm rural South to relax out in the country - but if enough people do that, you don't have a "country" any more...rural becomes suburbia really quickly, and that destroys the character and feel of the place, not to mention drags along the noise and the crime and the filth and the various other associated problems, and drives up our tax rates, etc. I've seen a tobacco field outside my front door for decades, and I'd like not to see it poured over with concrete and some "planned community" of big 2- and 3-story vinyl-clad cookie-cutter houses with the wide sidewalks and the manicured shrubbery and the BMW and Mercedes SUVs in the driveway, pop up. ANYHOW, sorry for going off on a diatribe for that long. It's a touchy subject for me. My family fought and died here, and I have a heritage and a connection that I deeply care about, and I stiffly resent the encroachment of rich non-Southerners and their big ugly greedy houses and their reprehensible lifestyles. They are to me what illegal Mexican immigrants are to Mr. Lou Dobbs. And in another meaning, when I say "hack traditional" - speaking purely in the architectural sense - I'm talking about folks who claim to want a "Southern traditional" or "Southern country" home - and yet they put in double-pane vinyl or aluminum-clad windows with the fake divided lites, and pre-finished hardwood flooring, and rocker switches, and vinyl siding, and hollow- or engineered-core or MDF doors, and a popcorn ceiling, and computerized kitchen appliances, and faux paint finishes on the walls, and new furniture with a "distressed" (read: fake) finish, and foam or no door and window casing, and roofing that isn't either 3-tab asphalt singles or 5v-crimp metal, and a walk-in pantry with a glass-panel door that has the word "pantry" etched on the glass with a picture of a wheat sheaf, etc. etc. etc. - I could list dozens more examples - there is a difference between real and pretend, between genuine and fake. When I say "traditional", I actually mean it. Not new mass-produced cheap garbage made artificially to look old, and modern architectural details which are in no way traditional or uniquely-Southern. I'm going to shut up about this now before I pop my aorta. Back to the original topic: yellow pine makes an excellent floor. And if you put the right type of finish on it, it has a beautifully warm glow to it and will hold up very well to normal usage (i.e. not doing the can-can on it while wearing steel-spiked golf shoes) -FaSoLa