If you eliminate standing water on your property (or add mosquito dunks, or flush out every week) you will deny the mosquitoes a place to breed and cut WAYYY down on your mosquito population. Of course, if your next door neighbor has a collection of skunky rainbarrels or something right on the other side of your fence, you'll still have a problem. I'm not aware that baby oil is particularly good for your skin; it's a petroleum product. Skin absorbs things, so I don't personally put anything on my skin I wouldn't be willing (healthwise, if not tastewise) to eat or drink. (I certainly wouldn't get "baby oil" anywhere near a baby of mine, although I did before I knew better.) If you Google "herbal mosquito repellant" I'm sure you can find one of the many articles on using essential plant oils for the purpose. Many of the blends actually outperform synthetic repellants like OFF. Essential oils can be an investment initially, since a bottle is not cheap, but because you only use a few drops at a time in high dilution they're really quite frugal. Kristin

What a beautiful kitty. He's lucky he found you. I am a fan of Honeybells. It's one of the first I bought and it did take me quite a while to appreciate it. At that time I thought all hostas should look like fortunei ones. Round, even and mounded. The wavy droopy look didn't excite me. I moved it around two or three times and ignored it. Eventually it ended up where it is shown in the first two pictures. I has room to kind of flow downhill and it suites it perfectly. It is sort of the king of this whole area of the garden. The third picture is of a honeybells I've been growing in a pot on the west side balcony - hot. As long as it sits in a dish of water it does just fine. This picture was taken on August 30 last year. Notice there is no damage to the leaves at all. As far as the flowers grow - it has nice ones. They may smell but I don't grow hostas for the flowers. The idea that they or guacamole and that family smell like gardenias makes me think that someone has never actually smelled a gardenia.

The monk books are fabulous. There is a puppy version -- I think it's called The Art of Raising a Puppy. Look on Amazon for the Monk's of New Skete and you'll find the puppy book. Also, one of the top trainers there left the monastery and became a very famous dog trainer -- Job Michael Evans. I have all his books. He is sound, humane and loves dogs. I was very priviliged to attend a seminar with him -- he was truly amazing. He took the leash in his hands and made eye contact and the dogs instantly respected him. He's passed on now but I re-read all his books whenever I get a new puppy. For anyone with a dog with behavioral issues, he has a great book on that too. I can't remember the name of it (again, look up his name) but he has a very funny and completely workable section on set ups to get a sneaky dog to misbehave so you can correct him when you're prepared. Other well respected trainers are the Volhards and Carol Lee Benjamin. I find that correcting young puppies varies tremendously from puppy to puppy. Some are very sensitive and a little goes a long way. Too much can crush them. Others are stubborn and even very young need to be shown who is boss. Corgis tend to nip (that's how they herd) and young ones will eventually nip the owners heels to herd somewhere they want to go (food, leashes). It's terribly important that any corgi owner is ready for this moment and makes it crystal clear that nipping a human is never allowed. On mine, I round on them, lower my voice to a threatening growl and give them a very loud lecture on how terrible it is. On the tough puppies I also tap their muzzle with one finger at the same time. On the sensitive ones I don't do this. I lower my eyebrows and stare them down at the same time. They get it. Bad, bad mistake. They'll try a few more times and get the same treatment. They stop. They soon know they cannot use their teeth on a human. One other method that can work on really young puppies who are playing too rough (it won't work if the puppy is trying to be aggressive) is to squawk loudly in pain. The higher pitched and louder the OUCH squeal the better. When littermates play too rough they yelp in pain. This shows the littermate that they were too rough and they learn to moderate it. Mom would enforce this rule so by the time we get the puppies most have learned this from mom. However, if the puppy was removed from mom to early he would not have learned this and it wouldn't work. Good luck.

Now my plumie is getting worse. So it has been raining a lot here in denver colorado and I put my girl in a brand new pot with some fresh organic soil mixed with perlite and a bit of sand with pea gravel on top. I have been trying to leave her outside for sun light but with all the rain I have just decide to bring her back inside. Her tips have gotten worse with the black showing on both branches. Please If I am to cut it. Can someone help me where do I start cutting. Do I separate the two branches and make two more plants or do I just cut off the black because everything else beside the tips the plant seems health