To anyone on the fence about tagging, I would encourage you to JUST DO IT! I mean outside of the fact that it is just so cool, I feel like a biologist! I found out the money you pay for the tags goes to help local villagers so they will not cut down the trees from the oyamel rainforest. There are biologist permanently in Mexico studying the Monarch and if local villagers find a tagged butterfly, they are paid $5 or 5 pesos (can't remember now). They hope this source of income will keep them from chopping down the trees to sell for firewood. Idealistic yes, but any little bit helps. It all feels so scientific too. I have to fill out a form for every butterfly tagged with all the information about sex, wild or reared, location, date released etc. I can't say it enough, it's just so COOL! Can you tell I'm excited about it? lol As for the necklaces, it's pretty simple but a steady hand does help. I take a piece of string or cord, put a dot of hot glue on the cord and then attach the chrysalis. I lift the string up slightly from the table and then just gently slide the chrysalis over to "meet" the bead of glue so I'm not constantly holding the chrysalis. It's time consuming and nerve-wracking but it keeps them safe. I never carry a cat or chrysalis in my hand, I always put them in a container so no accidents happen, which inevitably do. This year I tossed old milkweed in the compost after checking for any cats but missed one. Thankfully, he found his way to the milkweed garden and I found him and kept him safe. Opps! For those of you further south than me, it's still not too late to order your tags. Where I am the Monarchs will all be gone in a couple of weeks, but your season is longer. Have fun! P.S. I tagged two more today!

These are the size of business cards with whimsical designs on them. Open to trades. Cat.

I find it very important to also use a permanent way of marking the names of my perennials. I like to know that when I go to the plant that the name will be there always. With the sheer number of perennials in my yard I could never verify the cost of buying the premade copper or aluminum markers that I have seen in Lee Valley or other mail order catalogues, and I also do not run a nursery where you need those markers for all the visitors that come through each summer. What I do is buy rolls of copper tooling (copper metal foil 40 guage weight). The rolls are 1' wide and 3' long and I used to get them at Lewiscraft here in Canada before they closed, but now I get the rolls from Stockade... Here is the US web site... https://stockade.ca/category.asp?cat=CDL&funds=US Here is the Canadian site in Ontario... https://stockade.ca/category.asp?cat=CDL&no=US&funds=CDN I cut, with regular scissors, the copper into 1/2" by 3" pieces, use a hole punch to punch a hole on the center of one side and hang them on a coat hanger that has been cut and bent into a little hook for the copper to hang on. I then tuck this label behind the plant and sink the label into the ground and rest the copper at ground level. Over time the hanger wire will rust and the copper will patina (change to a brown color) but the name is still 100% readable. Copper tooling is soft enough to write on/engrave with a pen and I have all my perennials labelled with them. They will never fade, break or have to be redone. I have never had any bird fly off with them and no dogs or cats have ever moved or bothered to touch any of them. They cost about 10 cents to make and I make lots each summer for the local farmer's market and sell them 5 for $2.00. Brenda

Patty, I really don't think I am brave at all. I am a huge chicken and venomous snakes simply terrify me. I just do what I can to survive. I knew, realistically speaking, that we'd have venomous snakes when we moved to a rural area. Knowing it would happen, though, is not the same thing as having it happen! I just don't think I realized how many we'd see some years nor did I understand how much the close encounters would affect me. I am, truly, a big fraidy-cat. I will say that living in the country is not for sissies. Venomous snake encounters are not nearly as frightening as running into a cougar, panther, feral pig, rutting deer or rabid skunk....all of which we've encountered here. And, when you buy formerly "raw" land where local residents have hunted for decades, you WILL encounter poachers on your land and they WILL tell you that they've always hunted on this land and they aren't going to stop now just because you bought the land and put a house on it. And you'd better be armed and ready to defend yourself, and you'd better call the sherriff and report each incident and make it clear you will prosecute, which is only possible if your land is properly posted, by the way. So, not all snakes are animals..... We cleared out all the human snakes found on our property in just a couple of years, but the actual reptiles will be with us forever because we're so close to the Red River. I love, love, love living in the country and there are MANY enjoyable wildlife experiences.....bunnies, birds, fish, turtles, lizards, frogs, toads, squirrels, foxes, bats, dragonflies and damselflies, etc. I've had the great fortune to observe both bald eagles and golden eagles flying overhead or sitting on the tops of haybarns or trees. How wonderful is that? And, 99.9% of the people you encounter are wonderful, but there are a few that are scarey. So, you take the good with the bad and just try to go with the flow. Carol, I am as careful as I can be.....and, truly, I feel like God is watching over me and pray he continues to do so. Once, DS and I stepped into a "bunch" of coppperheads--a mother and 15 or 20 babies.....in the middle of the pasture. We fled from them....they fled from us, and somehow, we weren't bitten. (We were scared almost to death.) Those snakes are why we now mow 8' wide paths through all our pastures, and walk only on those paths!) Another time I was walking through my garden on a chilly fall morning and stepped right over a western diamondback rattlesnake that was coiled up in a path. I DIDN'T EVEN SEE IT! Luckily, DS was with me and said something like "Um, Mom, don't move because there's a rattlesnake right behind you." Of course, I moved.....immediately jumped forward a few feet and turned and stared at that snake, wondering all the while why it didn't strike me. DS went to the house, got a gun....and you know the rest. On yet another occasion, I was raking leaves and picking them up and putting them into a bag to carry them to my compost pile, and I suddenly realized a small pygmy rattlesnake was about 3" from my hand and was poised to strike......and, since I was crouched down low, I simultanouesly droppped the handful of leaves and the bag, and somersaulted backwards to get away. I didn't enter the woods for months after that. Those are a few examples....but there have been many snake encounters, and I honestly believe that it is only through God's grace that I haven't been bitten. For what it is worth, I don't hate all snakes, and I know that without them being here to eat all the field mice and meadow voles, we'd be overrun with rodents. We don't kill non-venomous snakes unless they are in our henhouse eating eggs, keats or chicks. I've even rescued non-venomous snakes which were being attacked by our cats, chickens, dogs or guineas. We have 14.5 acres and we pretty much leave the 10 or 11 wooded acres to the snakes during snake season. Then, in the winter months, we clear pathways and remove brush and enjoy walking through the woods (with dogs and cats tagging along behind us), but we don't kill snakes in the woods....we just avoid them during the 6 months of "snake season". In the couple of acres closest to the house, though, venomous snakes aren't tolerated. And, really, one of my biggest fears ISN'T that a venomous snakes will bite me, but rather that it will get away before we can kill it. If the venomous snakes are near the house, barn or garden, I want them dead. I'm really enjoying the cool weather too. During the cool spell a couple of weeks ago, we got down to 44 or 45 a couple of nights and I was deliriously happy in those early morning temps. I knew, though, it wasn't quite sweater weather, yet, and of course we haven't been that cool again, but it is in the 50s here this morning and that is nice. I know what you're saying about the nuts on the roof of the bunhouse! Our chicken coop and guinea coop are under a pecan tree and their roofs get showered with nuts too. Then the poultry begins squawking and carrying on because they think a predator is trying to come in through the roof. (A previous chicken coop had a fiberglass skylight to let in some light, and a large owl once crashed through that skylight in an effort to get himself some chicken, so their fear is not exactly unwarranted.) Fall is my favorite time of year except for the part about the snakes being up and about....and the knowledge that colder weather is coming. Once we've had several hard freezes and the snakes are denned up for the winter, I enjoy fall even more! I made it through a whole day Friday without running into a snake, so my nerves have calmed down a little. Well, actually, I saw the same snake Friday morning that I saw Thursday night, because we had to lift the bucket, retrieve it and get rid of it. It wasn't as scarey, though, because I KNEW it was there. To me, the most upsetting snake is the big, black, often 6-foot-long rat snakes that get in the chicken coop. I HATE even seeing them at all....even if we are a mile from the house and I see one crossing the road, it just makes me feel ill. I hope I've seen my last venomous snake of the year, but at the same time, I am sure I haven't. Dawn