YES! THAT BABY NEEDS MILK! Yikes. Not to worry you, but she absolutely cannot just live off hay/pellets/water until she is at least 2 months old. It sounds like you have done everything you can to get her to suck. I would keep working on her every day to try and get her to suck (keep doing everything you have been) but she also needs to have that milk in her tummy- even if she doesn't suck it. Call your vet and ask if they have a small animal 'tuber' or a sterile catheter and a 60cc syringe. Basically, you are going to 'tube' the milk straight into her stomach so that she is nourished until she gets the hang of sucking. Once you have it, hold her between your legs firmly and hold her head in one hand. With the other hand, put the tube in the right side of her mouth and gently start sliding it down. You will be able to feel it going down her throat. She is not going to like this! You have to keep a good grip on her or she will struggle free. Listen to the sound that the syringe makes when you have it in her (oh yeah, make sure that you have the plunger part out before you put the tube in her stomach). If it sounds like air is coming out of it when she screams, DO NOT put milk in! If it sounds like that, pull it out and try it again. Usually it (the syringe) will make a sound every once in a while that sounds kind of like gurgling. That is normal. Once you think you have it in, go ahead and pour the milk in the syringe. You should give her about 16oz. in the morning and 16oz. at night. Good luck! I sure hope she starts sucking for you soon. Katherine

A couple of issues. How long ago did you put in top soil and sod? Normal levels of reasonably acidic soils are not going to burn through a top level of added good soil and the soil that comes with the sod in any short period of time. Unless you are watering it with battery acid, it should have done well for a reasonable length of time if you kept it adequately watered and decently fertilized. Second, your pic shows an entire yard, fence to fence, that is completely bare. Shading from the fence, if a factor of any significance, by itself might affect the viability of grass for two to three feet from the fence - max. Odds are you have other issues affecting a back yard with top soil and sod added to it. Any one or more of those suggested above might be contributing. Adding lime might be one of the things you can do to help get it headed in the right direction. But, you probably have a number of steps you need to take to alleviate what can be described a wall to wall disaster.

I have two gardens, straddling the Ohio/PA border, about 13 miles apart. Due to persistent cold and wet cloudy weather tomatoes are ripening later this year than normal. I've had a few but not like in a normal year. Normally I shoot for at least 1 nice red by the 4th of July but this year didn't get him until the 13th. However, when I look at the fruit set on my plants, and the generally large size of all the greenies I am wondering what the devil I am going to do with all those tomatoes when they do come in! Here is the flip side: yesterday I picked hot peppers (and a few sweets) and prepped them for soaking and then canning today. I don't ever remember getting into canning hot peppers this early in the year. They were not very hot because of so much rain so I left some seeds in from the jalapeno peppers to heat the batch up. Fantastic garlic/winter onions and shallots this year by the way, and dill over 4 ft tall! Cukes and beans are slow also. Summer squash is piling up, onions are still growing and they are later than usual-giant in the PA garden but wimpy here in Ohio. Pretty much an unusual year so far and with many good yields through the various varieties.

All of you ladies are so right!!! I am so thankful I found this forum, to give me the courage to do what I knew inside I needed to do. After my last post to lilysuzanne last night, I sent him a text message (he was at his mom's with is kids). It was around 2:30am... if course I couldn't sleep. The text said basically I couldn't be in this relationship with him any more & I would talk to him in the mornign when he came home. This morning, we had that conversation. I did break up with him. As bad as I hurt, I feel that much more liberated. He kept saying stuff was about his kids, but as I pointed out to him, nothing he said correlated to his children. It was all about him and his fear(s) of committment, "manning up", and DEMONSTRATING his love for me. He referenced the times less than four that he has attempted to do family oriented things with me and his children. He said his son feels uncomfortable because of tension that he feels, and felt 1 or 2 other times when we were all together and his father and I were upset with one another. I reminded him that we have NEVER argued in front of or around his children; not even when we were all the same house. He said, it was "ONE" time his son flet like we were angry with one another and it made him feel uneasy... Now, everytime I am around he (his son) gets that feeling. My answer to that was: 1. The only way to overcome negative feelings is to be consistently positive, and taling advantage of those moments when the opportunity presents itself. 2. The tension his son felt was the uneasiness that we all have being on pins & needles around each other the less than four times I have been around them. Moreover, my BF does nothing to counteract his son's excuses. 3. He knows just like I know, that if a child hears bad things from BioM for years and dad does nothing to counteract the negativity, then the child will feed off of that. He said he knew that I have never done anything to disrespect or hurt his children. His children would respect me in my presence, BUT he needs to make sure that his realtionship with his kids is guarded. He is concerned about how they "view" him. To me, that was a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Another excuse! His children will always love him. All he has to do is do what is right. We went on and on--- so much was said... but the bottom line was that I told him I just couldn't do this anymore. He agreed that I was a selfLESS person, and had given up a lot. He left the house, but called in 5 minutes trying to confuse me... but I held my ground! He said... "Everytime I think we are making progress in our relationship, and getting closer to the goal of marriage something comes up to step in the way of the plan." I know his goal was to catch me off guard and say to myself, "Self, you are moving too fast. Slow down. He was about to ask you to marry him. Give him a little longer... another chance." Luckily, I could visualize every post on this forum from last night. I almost gagged, that he thought after all we talked about that I should wait one more day to move "closer..." Is he crazy? Wait! Let me answer that... YES! He is CRAZY! 9 years is long enough. THANKS LADIES, and angelz DH (for giving me a man's POV, whiched helps me to seal the deal).