NO. You have to feed and water the rose and that is best accomplished FROM THE TOP. The water and nutrients are going to go through the herbs first so they'll get theirs before the rose will. You want the rose healthy and vigorous. Why take half its root area; half its water holding potential away from it for the herbs? What happens when you determine you don't like the bugs or fungal issues and want to spray the rose to get rid of them? You don't want to spray your herbs, even with organics or bacterials. If the plants were in the ground, it would be less of an issue as there would be tremendously greater soil area providing tremendously better water holding potential than the pot does. Even then, though, you would still face the potential spray issue. Plus, the rose will benefit from being regularly fed. The herbs generally don't NEED to be. Kim

Howdy all! It's granny Barb here, oldest of the TD coots. Why do I have to log on as a member here now? Even wickedcoolstuff.com remembers me from my email address. I've been visiting with you all by email cuz I thought you were all chatting away there to bypass GW new confused state. Gee I sure missed a lot! BTW I'm fine. I've dealt with paraplegia for 55 years and even a nasty surgery won't stop me, tho I may be off my feed and so on for awhile. Life goes on, and I enjoy most of it, you all especially, most of the time. I hope I can stay and watch the fun, even if I can't do up boxes while I recover. Very comforting to have friends around while healing. And they may not want to operate after all. In which case, I'll be permanently slowed down. If so, you are still a lovely bunch of gardener types to hang out with. I'll keep you posted. The deciding appt. with surgeon #2 is Feb. 3. Wow, I'm so behind! Greenhouses and businesses, kids and grandkids with good news and not so good, daylilies and orchids, kitchens and chocolate! I'm paying attention here. The brugs are growing in their pots, out of the cellar, but I did lose my favorite, Yellow Wedding Bells. The 2 cuttings I kept just screamed, rotted and passed away. I never plan to collect them, tho; all I want is a modest brug forest beside the knifophias. Doesn't matter if half of them are the same. That's the joy of lotsa land. I'll never fill it all up! Our old friend of 30 years M was here for the weekend. He's recovering from open heart surgery last Aug. and the change in him is phenomenal! He's lost 50 lbs., he's happy and agile, all rosy and the twinkle is back in his eye! He about drove us mad picking arguments over politics before. Now he tells silly jokes again! Wore me out, tho. Deni I looked up your illness. It's like my everlasting nerve pain, but with some added bonuses just to keep you guessing. You get a lot done despite. Terrific. What is going on in everybody's ponds? Are the fish ok with all this nutty weather? I think we should all post our animal pictures nefore Jan is over, as part of the Jan swap theme. Any hints on keeping raccoons out of suet feeders? It is already hoisted quite a ways up a tree. They climb, then hang on the feeder and pull everything down with them. And during this animally time, I just have to say it out loud, corner nothwithstanding: I REALLY LIKE FROGS A LOT! TOADS TOO! I do. DD Sara had an enormous toad she called Frank she used to kiss on the lips. We told her not to, but you all have kids and know how much they listen sometimes. Ol' Frank got so used to it he'd just hang there, with his legs dangling; he was about 7" long from lips to toes. Wish I'd taken a picture! Next time I'll be all caught up and post something more germane... hugs all around Barb

Thinking back on these memories has brought to mind perhaps the funniest prank I was ever involved in. When I was a Sophomore in High School there was a store in my home town called the Fiesta shop that sold all kinds of high end collectibles from around the world. In one corner of the store they had a small area with rare gourmet foodstuffs. One day while browsing through the store we found a can about 5" in diameter and 2" deep that contained a whole canned octopus. Understanding that it was at least 500 miles to the nearest sea shore it then goes without saying that we had never seen an octopus except pictures in a book or on TV. The can was $7.00 and this was at a time when men on top union labor contracts were only making $1.75/hr. At least once a week we went by the store to see if anyone had bought it yet, but it was still there so we got the silly idea to pool our money until we could buy it, just to see what an octopus really looked and felt like. It took us nearly three weeks but we managed to get the money together and we bought the can. There we were walking down main street tossing the can back and forth and trying to figure out how we were going to open the can when my buddy Tom S. got the silly idea, lets go to the Sears store and use one of the can openers on their display rack. Off to Sears where we opened the can, then went out to the alley to pour the liquid out and see what an octopus looks like. We pulled it out of the can and took turns holding it, examining it, then it hit us, what in heavens name do we do with it now? We surely were not going to eat that nasty thing. Suddenly my buddy Norm grabs it and say "Come on guys, I got an idea". Back into Sears we went, this time heading to the appliance department. There it was, right in the middle of the appliance department, a brand new Kenmore wringer washing machine. In those days they used to put water in the demonstrators and drop some poker chips in so the ladies could see the action as the water sloshed around inside. Norm casually walked by and dropped the octopus in the washing machine, then we went and sat on the stairs going up to the second floor and watched the action. About ten minutes later a lady was innocently browsing through the appliance department when she happened to look in that washing machine and saw the octopus swimming around in the water. Instantly she went ballistic, screaming, hollering about monsters and such. The salesmen ran over to see what the problem was and they went nuts too. What the hell is that thing? How do we catch it? Somebody call the cops! The cops arrived and by that time one of the sales clerks had gone to the hardware department and got a pair of huge pliers which he used to grab the octopus, heaving it out on the floor where the cops pounded it with night sticks, then stomped on it until they were sure it was dead. By this time my buddies and I were nearly falling down laughing as we scrammed out the back door of Sears and ran home.

Eema, I hear you. Good for you too for wading through the emotions to look for Wild's point. I still disagree with it, in this case. The harsh reality is this. A very small percentage of our population has a psychological impairment referred to as Antisocial Personality Disorder. Now, I don't know if Josh had that, but the truth is, that with that many people walking the earth who have not an ounce of caring for other humans, the likelihood of attrocious acts occurring is very high. Not common, but it's gonna happen. And it will happen whether we spend every tax cent on social programs or not. These people do NOT care, about me, or you, or babies, or missing mothers, or anything. For "normal" humans like you and I, it is difficult to fathom this. So we think that if we control situations with rules, and regulations, that we can avoid these awful things. Reality, we cannot. He killed those kids, and the case worker could not have done a thing, nor could have police, or anyone else. I'm grateful they did not have to meet in a public place, because I am quite convinced that he was going to die and take those kids with him regardless of the situation. And when you have a missing wife, and you make as many ridiculous decisions as he did, you are going to have a lot of people hating on you. It just is the nature of humans. If he hadn't killed her, I'm fairly certain he wouldn't have needed to do all the stupid stuff he did. I'm not worried that an innocent man took his life that day. I'm not feeling too guilty that I, or society, or the system forced him to do something horrible. He's part of that 1% that we have to consider humanity's handicap.