Carla Emory has a couple of paragraphs about home-grown rabbit food: "The old-timers who wintered their rabbits on food they'd grown themselves fed them such things as stock beets and cabbage in winter as well as their grain and hay. So can you. Pea and bean vines can be cured like hay and make an excellent hay substitute or supplement. "In season, rabbits like anything green, but you must be careful not to feed them plants that are outrightly poisonous, such as chokecherry or rhubarb leaves, or potato peels with sprouts or the ones that have been in the sun long enough to get even the slightest touch of green. Other greens are only mildly poisonous in the uncooked state such as pigweed, amaranth greens, spinach, comfrey, and Swiss chard--but for a creature with a small body weight like a rabbit, especially a young rabbit, these can be a problem too. Much of the reason that people develop a fear of growing their own rabbit food, or have had bad experiences with home feeding of rabbits is that they don't understand how very many greens, wild or domestic, are not fully safe to feed rabbits, and which are. Before feeding a leafy green or herb for the first time, check the list under "Edible for Rabbits" below, to see if there is a warning of any sort about it. Stick to feeding them human-type salad greens unless you know for sure a wild one is safe. If cooking is advised for a green or category of greens (the amaranth family), don't feed it to rabbits who, of course, would be eating it raw. If it's in the least toxic, don't feed it to them. If it might have chemical residues in it, don't feed it to them. "I plant extra rows of lettuce for them. And when I weed in the summer, I take along a bucket to put the pulled edible weeds for rabbits. Feeding this way you never have to buy a rabbit pellet and they do fine. When fed home-grown stuff, they'll grow a little slower (and more normally) to that 2-lb. butchering size. But it's far cheaper, and I have organic meat because conception on, they've been nourished with home-grown foods and greens, or hay and grain from a source I know is chemical-free. "Vegetables/Greens/Fruits: A combination of grains is better than a single one. A combination of veggies and greens plus grain and hay is better yet. Let your rabbits do some of the picking and choosing. They'll choose what they need. They'lll love much of what you offer of this sort, and it's a nice way to tame them--hand-feeding them some veggie treats. For pregnant and nursing does, variety is especially important. Offer the vegetables or leafy greens in season (the longer the season, the better). Garden and kitchen vegetables and fruit scraps can be included also, as long as they're not on the unhealthy list. If you're just starting to supplement a rabbit's diet in this way, go slowly at first until your bunny gets used to it. Limit what you feed so that surplus doesn't rot in the cage. Rotting surpluses are good for chickens or pigs, but not rabbits. In fact, rabbits can get sick from eating partly spoiled greens. Garden vegetables for rabbits, as for people, are mostly water. Greens are water plus lots of minerals and vitamins. Root vegetables are higher in energy supplied, lower in the mineral-and-vitamin department."

Fawnridge, just so you know, this is certainly not the only thread where things have gotten out of control. There have been five or six in recent weeks that seemed very unpleasant, so please don't think anyone was referring to only two people. There was an exceptionally nasty political thread on the conversations page that was removed, thankfully, with a whole different cast of characters, and several other posts, as well. Plenty of blame to go around from all of us who may have lost our tempers. I just wish it would stop and folks could express their differences without making it personal. But I have my doubts at this point. Marcia

Hi Rebecca Glad you had a better experience with your returns from J&P with their error. I totally sympathize with you about too much hassle to arrange a return with the other company, and I'm rather of that opinion about the two roses that arrived dead. You're entirely right that you can get better responses when you can talk to a real human being on the phone, but most of my rose purchasing and other rose activity tends to happen in the evenings like this when companies aren't available to talk. I remember playing tag calling one company over a period of a few weeks to get them my new credit card information - totally my goofy daytime work schedule of course, they were lovely to work with. As for the 300 roses, if you figure 20% losses immediately over a winter, plus another 10% inexplicable established rose fading or dying in addition, it turns out to be more or less replacement rose numbers when you're upwards of 900 roses as I seem to be. Depending on rose survival, I might top 1000 for the first time ever this year but not if I get average deaths. Frankly, planting band or gallon roses (most of my purchases) aren't any harder to plant than any other perennial in terms of effort. The main challenge is figuring out exactly where I want to put them, then mixing in the alfalfa and soil conditioner to the regular soil to plant them (I have pretty good soil to start with, so I can dig a rose hole even 2' deep in a few shovelfuls). At around 15 minutes a rose, I can plant 30 roses on an average weekend day without too much strain, though bareroots take more work and deeper planting. I can start on those more gradually in April though, and I have more energy then. I really do consider myself a lazy gardener, since I don't spray or fuss over them much, and in our zones the roses don't get all that big in general so I can get away with crowding them a bit and indulging myself. The folks who have to use a pickax to dig a rose hole are the ones to really admire. Two or three of those, and I think I'd be done for the season. Cynthia

Great pic Oakley! Your cat looks very interested! Moccasins are BAD. I do think they are temperamental snakes! You better get some cilantro planted around those tomatoes! That bull snake would scare me too! I meant to say oak...don't know why I typed walnut trees! Bethpen that is so scarey!!! I would have almost died too! I cannot imagine a snake flying out at me! I used rags to scoop the snakes up. The only one that tried to bite was the baby snake stuck on the painters tape. It was hard to get off. It kept snapping at me. I didn't want to touch it and I was trying to bend the tape so it could get itself off. It finally did and slithered outside. I think snakes are interesting but I don't like them enough to touch them or ever want one for a pet. For whatever reason, I always seem to run into snakes. People who lived in AZ have told me they have never seen a rattler their whole lives. I stopped counting at 35 my first summer mtn biking here. I almost stepped on a huge one when my gears malfunctioned one night. I was VERY lucky it didn't strike as it was PO. Twice when I was small, I ran into rattlers in the desert that were angry and ready to strike. My grandfather had to shoot them with his pistol. Another time I ran into a huge King snake. He actually caught it with his bare hands to show me it was harmless. When I was little we moved to NC so my stepdad could go to duke law school. I found a baby snake on the side of the road and put it in my overalls pocket. I forgot about it until dinner. I remember my mother dropping dishes when I pulled it out of my pocket. It was alive and probably quite happy in my pocket. It was a copperhead.