susieroses, great pics! And, oooolll...la, la!!! JT's make-over is (KISS)"perfection!" I'm sorry to say though...even as innocent as she looks, she doesn't fit in with the "angels" decor! She's a sly little one...nice try, JT...but the sleigh & horse-back on more your style! TFS pics, susieroses! Am happy to hear she brought you Christmas cheer! Jeanne S.

Ok you guys no one offered but I'm asking...I want some of the trumpet vines and some morning glories as long as they are not pale pink. Anyone want to share some of their bounty with me? (PLEASE). Ok, Pretty Please with sugar on it! I also need ya'lls help with a difficult area I want to plant SOMETHING. It is in the shade all day, and the soil is lousy and I really can't amend it because of trees and roots. I have flowerbeds around the trees with vinca ground cover, daffs, and irises. I outlined the beds with iron ore rocks that are all over this place. They look real pretty but it's the area between the flowerbeds and the walkway that is nothing but dirt. What can I plant there that will grow good in the shade and look nice. I'm tired of looking at the dirt. Please keep in mind this area has SORRY SOIL and the huge trees will probably suck up most of the water. Anyone got and ideals for me? I certainly would be thrilled with any of ya'lls thoughts. I'm brain dead when it comes to this area. Happy Gardening, and please share some of the morning glory and trumpet vines with me. I have plenty of places they can take over....like the back 30 acres LOL. Marian

Crickets eat dried hot pepper pods. I was drying some Goat Weed pods on the counter a few years ago and when I went in the kitchen to get something I noticed a couple cricket hopping away from the half dried pods. I stomped one and it was full of red pepper.Left a red spot on the floor.I looked at the pods and several were eaten. I only grow hot peppers and found most pepper sprays don't really work that well for me. I use bennificial insects with great success once they get established.Usually I don't have a very big problem with bugs but this year they are worse than I can remember them ever being. usually putting DE or boric acid powder around my pots does the job.Too many crickets this year.They do the damage before they die.Right now I have a bunch of baby crickets all over the place. Not just eating the plants,they are chewing holes in my cloths and everything else.I have to put everything they like in hard plastic containers.They eat through zip locks. The crickets and June bug grubs are especially bad this year. I think it's because of the soil mix I started using and the hot dry weather this year. The crickets like to eat the bark off the plant until it dies or they chew the small plants down and eat the leaves. Grubs eat the roots.I got 60-70 grubs out of a 15 gal. pot a while back.My Trinidad Scorpion kept falling over and had no roots left. I ended up zapping the pot with an electric worm zapper for getting fishing worms.The grubs came up and I stomped them... Found another grub today so I might zap the pot again tomorrow.

"The weather is hot, but not super humid. So long as you have a big tree, a swimming pool and working A/C, you'll be fine." Oh, my gosh, I so disagree with this comment. I think Texas is unbearably hot and humid in the summers. I live in Iowa, where we typically experience very hot and humid summers, and Texas, IMHO, is 10 times worst. I made the mistake one summer of visiting my brother--who used to live in Grapevine and is now in Bedford with plans to move to Fort Worth shortly--in July. It was terrible! I vowed never to go back to TX in July and I never have. We went from A/C'ed house to A/C'ed car to A/C'ed store. We were only ever briefly out of the A/C. Of course...all this said...I LOVE going to Texas during an Iowa winter. Nothing like being able to go outside in nothing but shorts and a T-shirt in the middle of December when everyone else back home is shivering in their heavy coats!