I eat the mulberries, a little with each pass of the mower until my seat becomes purple. I tried to get ComEd to prune the trees but they weren't interested. They told me if I knocked their line down while pruning I'd have to pay for the repair. I seem to have a no win situation. If a storm hits that takes down the line they will probably come and cut everything down, leaving a hosta garden below to cook in the sun. Oh well - that's life nowdays. I want the new bed but I think I am trying to talk myself out of the work to clear the brush. That would give me about 50 feet of understory between the street and my walnut garden. That a lot of hosta (SOL = "Smiling Out Loud"). Yellow hosta are complimented by purple best aren't they. Lisa, do I have to razor-sharpen my post-hole digger to cut through the mulberry roots when digging planting holes? Les

I agree with all of you;) I was going to mulch, as in this area it gets very cold. The dirt is pretty soft here, but it has time to settle this summer. With a good layer of mulch those rocks will look like part of the family in no time!! Thanks all, I am so much happier with how it is going, thanks to all your great ideas. You are an awesome group:) Gabby

Look how long we've been struggling with voles! I first looked them up on gardenweb years ago when we had tons. I remember a day when I snap-trapped fourteen in a couple of hours! Here is an odd solution which has worked (apparently) for me. In frustration I began flooding the holes and tunnels with the end of my hose. Amazingly it seemed to work. I have done this for several years and where I use to have LOTS of voles and vole damage I rarely see a hole now and when I do I immediately flood it. I did use oyster shells but I have such large gardens that it was completely impractical. And now where I did use them they keep coming to the surface - years later - and I don't like the look of them. This year I have grubs and thus I have moles as well as skunks which dig holes in the lawn. I was able to move the moles away from the very front part of my yard also by flooding (stick the brass nozzle of the hose right through the turf into the tunnel) - it doesn't get rid of them like it seemed to get rid of the voles. But it did make them move. I am not a lawn fanatic but between brown spots from grubs and holes from skunks it's too ratty. I am using milky spore and it'll take quite some time before this solves the problem but it's the non-poison way to go and once established it'll do the trick for years. Just to say - unless I missed this on this long thread - moles and voles have not got the same habits and thus need different solutions. Voles are not carniverous, do not eat grubs so getting rid of the grubs won't deal with the voles. I only brought up the topic of moles as they also don't seem to like flooded muddy tunnels. After I tried my vole-death/relocation-by-flooding I read in an article somewhere that in Mexico some farmers were protecting their fields which were under vole attack by putting trenches filled with water around them. Well, hope somebody else tried flooding and writes about how it works for them . If nothing else, it is very satisfying!!

One puppy has one eye open. All are showing signs of 'attitudes'. In a few days when everyone gets their eyes open I'll take pictures. It's time to put them online so the last two can be claimed. I'm really excited. All of the puppies will have 'bad hair day' hair like Tuffy. Even at a week old their hair is sticking up and all have little mustaches, beards and eyebrows. They are starting to make noises too. They growl and bark at each other a lot. They are just down the hall (in the furnace room) from my computer so I can hear them. Lori