Glad to hear from you Maryl....! We've all been concerned about you since the tornadoes. So glad you seem to be okay. Yes, it is hard not to get antsy. I was hoping to get all mine planted in May since my daughter is having her baby in early June. (Because she lives with us, I am helping her with the baby and am her birthing coach. She had contractions all last night so I thought maybe we were having a baby, but nope). I feel better knowing I'm not the only one waiting for our orders. I hate to bother Robin because I know she's a one-woman show and such a nice lady so I'll try to be patient. Celeste

I recently place a 1st time order with High Meadow Hostas at 50% off. Due to health reasons, they are going out of business and their inventory is down so I wasn't able to order all of the varieties that I wanted. The owner assured me that I won't be disappointed with the size of the plants that I'll be receiving. Also, assured me that they'll be healthy and have no nematodes! A big, big concern of mine after all that I went through last fall. After reading the Garden Watchdog Ratings I feel confident that I'll be happy with the plants. A GIANT THANK YOU TO "lykaon78" FOR POSTING THAT WEBSITE!

Broadcast sprays with residual action (the only way they'd have any effect other than shortly after the actual spraying) are not benign. I know of nothing that targets only mosquitos so anything you use will also kill other, unintended, insects. (And potentially harm the birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and mammals that eat the poisoned, off-target insects.) Just because the company is owned by an entomologist doesn't necessarily mean he has much interest in live bugs, or a healthy environment. Indeed, one of the most lucrative career paths for entomologists is working for chemical companies devising new insecticides. I live (and work outdoors) in a buggy, ticky, rural area and there is no way I'd ever consider broad spectrum, residual sprays for my own comfort. Biting bugs can be miserable - you don't want to experience the sheer misery of black fly season on my northern NY farm - but there are ways to make them less annoying w/o adding to the chemical load in our world. Disrupting the environment by spraying makes it difficult for natural balance to exert itself and help mitigate the problem. More effective solutions such as neighborhood efforts to get rid of standing water everywhere make a bigger difference in the long run. I have lived in parts of the world where mosquitos carry deadly diseases and a huge difference happens when people change their behavior and discourage the conditions that promote mosquitos, even w/o sprays. Landscaping and environmental changes, protective clothing, head nets, screens, dumping water accumluations, fans, even the odious chemical-attractant mosquito killers (not ordinary bug zappers, which really don't work and kill many beneficial insects) are much better than insecticides which don't really work unless sprayed frequently at high levels. And at low levels are mostly ineffective but still extract a serious environmental cost on non-target organisms. Please consider some other remedies before the dubious, and enviromentally costly, quick fix of spraying. Your worries about your dog's safety are laudable, but what about the other animals that live on or near your property whose much-smaller body masses makes them even more vulnerable to the sprays. You not proposing to keep all the birds, squirrels, bunnies, turtles, snakes, fish, etc., safely inside your house on spray-days, are you? L.

Reptiles probably would be more reliable, but they are somewhat "rare" around here. I just go by the calander and hope for the best haha. In years I plant potatoes I do use dandelions as the cue for when to plant them. Once the neighbors yard turns yellow, I stick them in the ground. It takes a white for the tops to break the soil and even if they do, I can just throw dirt on top of them if it gets too cold. Peppers go out in mid-late May (because I grow them in containers I can move them out of inclement weather) tomatoes get planted in the garden a week or two later. If we get a frost in early June (which is pretty uncommon), it doesn't much matter if the warm season stuff like squash and tomatoes get hurt by it, at that point there's not really enough season left for them to produce anyways.