I love the foxes and we don't see them very often because they are rather shy and tend to remain in the heavy cover of the woods. Tish, Let me tell you about wildlife. We specifically chose to move way out here to the boondocks of southern Oklahoma (from Fort Worth, Texas,) in 1999, because we wanted to live in a remote, rural area with lots of wildlife. All I can say is that you need to be careful what you wish for. Got wildlife? Oh, yes, we do. Since moving here, we see the following on a regular basis: coyotes, deer, rabbits, possums, armadilloes, skunks, ferrets, foxes, bobcats, ring-tailed cats, raccoons, field mice and voles (cats keep them under control on the acre or two closest to the house), gophers, moles, snakes, lizards, skinks, newts, birds of all kinds, bees, butterflies, bats, dragonflies and damselflies, clearwing hummingbird moths and sphix moths, and so many more than I could ever list. Some of my favorites are the rabbits, glass lizards, dragonflies, hummingbirds, all the other birds, the moths, the deer (most of the time) and the bats. Some of my least favorites are the venomous snakes and the skeeters and chiggers. Oh, and the skunks. Rarely, but once every couple of years or so, we have encounters with the tawny-coated mountain lions and the black panthers. When that happens, it scares me to death. I had a nearby mountain lion roar at me in the darkness one night, and I almost dropped dead of fright right there on the spot. A neighbor who lives about a mile up the road heard the thing roar and came to check on us. My son had an even closer encounter with a black panther in our driveway one night. Scarey. And, even though we have never had to run for our lives to get away from feral pigs, some of our neighbors have. We HAVE had feral pigs living at the back of our property, but they haven't come closer to the house than a few hundred feet. And then there are the white-tail deer, with whom we have a love-hate relationship. Ninety percent of the time, we love them. The ten percent of the time that I find them in the garden devouring whatever crop sounds good to them at the moment, that's the time I don't love them. The next door neighbor whose property is west of us feeds them all winter, then fights to keep them out of his garden the rest of the year. So do we. I can't bear to see them get skinny and starving in the winter. Sometimes in the winter and early spring, we have 6 or 8 out behind the barn eating the deer corn. In the spring, though, I try to run them off.....unless a doe brings her fawn or fawns up to the house to show them off, which they sometimes do. Then, I ooh and ahh over the pretty babies, tell the does to wait, and I get a bucket or two of henscratch (we don't keep deer corn handy in the warm months) and pour it on the ground for the does. While the does eat, they leave the babies on the edge of the woods near my garden, almost as if they expect me to "babysit". It happens about every other year or so and is always a "magical moment". I wouldn't say our little herd of deer are "tame" but they certainly are comfortable around us. (But I am careful to never get too close to them or let them get too close to me.) And, it is only our does who are relaxed and comfortable around us....the occasional buck who is passing through isn't nearly as friendly. My all-time favorite, most incredibly wonderful wildlife experience was a pair of bald eagles in the summer of 2004. I would see them sitting on top of a big old metal pole barn used for hay storage at an old farm where no one lived any longer, although cattle were on the land. That place is about a mile and a half from our place, and I would see the eagles while walking the dogs or jogging. I saw them several times. It was awesome. Twice they flew right over our house, and the friend of ours (who, tragically, died of cancer the following year) who was building our garage/barn saw them too. It was one of those great moments where you see something so special that you can't believe you're seeing it. Since then, there have been other bald and golden eagles overwintering in the area. It IS always special to see them, but nothing is quite as special as that summer to me. The bobcats can be a problem for our pets, so we chase them off when they appear. Last year one of the bobcats got in the habit of sitting in my veggie garden. And, when a human appeared, he really didn't want to leave either. My son chased him off several times by running at him, waving his arms and yelling. The darn thing kept coming back. Finally, DS fired a gun into the ground behind the bobcat, and that cat finally understood he wasn't welcome in the garden. So, if you WANT wildlife, we've got it.....but sometimes more than we really want, need or can feed! Dawn

Every now and then, I find a tomato that looks great on the outside, but is black and nasty on the inside. What is this and is there anything I can do about it? There are a couple of reasons that I can think of as to why this happens. First, there is a form of BER where there are NO external symptoms but the dead tissue is black inside. Second, small worms can bore holes and allow the normal bacteria and fungi found in the environment to get inside and initiate a rotting process. Same thing happens if there's any break in the skin due to anything. Carolyn

When we were working we ate out a lot. At least one night a week we ate at a little seafood restaurant in a strip mall not far from our house. The waitress was a big, tall gal and when she wasn't busy she'd sit with us and tell jokes. :-) The owners were the sweetest people and the food was delicious. They caught their own seafood so you know how fresh it was. Menu was on a chalkboard and always had cheese grits (the best), greens and lots of good stuff. The owner made the best crab bisque but she wouldn't share her recipe. :-( They got so popular they moved to downtown Dunedin and it just isn't the same, but we still drop in and have lunch when we go down, and they still remember us.

This is a very old thread, but still, it's not so simple. Plants conditioned to low light indoors can very quickly suffer severe damage (photo-oxidation - aka sunburn) if moved outdoors into direct sun, even for intervals of only an hour or two ..... and this isn't a species/genera-specific issue. Sudden chill injury can also cause damage at temps as high as 50*F, causing contents of cells to leak into inter-cellular spaces, so those unfamiliar with the pitfalls should arm themselves with knowledge before doing their plants a favor that ends up looking more like a punishment. In the end, what determines a plant's "health status" (level of vitality) is how well the plant is able to cope with the cultural hand it's been dealt. Any time a plant is asked to deal with conditions near or beyond the limits it's been programmed to tolerate, stress results, which is a limiting factor directly linked to the severity of the stress. Al