Yes, I know all these things, and I would much rather not plant in the mud. The areas with standing water are areas that I do not plant anything in until I get some raised beds for it. I don't plant there for two reasons. 1) in the spring, it always floods and water doesn't drain well; and 2) in summer, the soil is so compacted - hardpan - that nothing will grow in it anyway. I was wondering about my "good" garden areas, though. With Hops, I am assuming I should add some compost and chicken manure to get the rhizomes off to a good start. I guess I will try to wait until it's a little bit drier anyway. We are supposed to get more rains and possible tornados this afternoon. I'm concerned about Linda, because she is kind of in a "tornado alley" area. Although yesterday's tornados were not too far from me - about 10 miles or so. They were not really big tornados, although they did knock an RV off the Kilpatrick turnpike - both occupants sent to the hospital with critical injuries, and did significant damage to some houses, barns, and outbuildings, and a parking lot of semi trucks were tossed around. Still, everyone considered it a "small" tornado on Oklahoma's scale of tornados. An F5 would be the worst, and we have had F5s here (winds up to 300 mph). I think top winds yesterday were about 116 mph. F5s are humongous. The last one was one mile wide and destroyed 25,000 homes in SE Oklahoma not too mention across the state from the SW to the NE. OKC always seems to just miss them, or if they do come into the city, they dissipate in short order. I did see one many years ago. We were going to the mall and noticed one had formed just to our south. We stopped at a strip mall with a restaurant, and the owner hustled all of us into the storage place that was like a big, bank safe where we waited it out. Susan

TY! Yes, one of the Hamelias . A Monarch and a Gulf Fritillary nectaring side by side. I have several different firebush plants through-out the garden. As for feeders, I keep feeders on hand and only put them out when after I see a hummer. I keep them clean , replacing small amount of sugar syrup every other day in hopes it may be just the extra encouragement too keep hummers in the garden. The one year we did have hummers nesting, they were so illusive, we only saw the male once, the female once, then suddenly there were babies :) I never did see any of them use the feeders :( Luckily, the babies followed a schedule, feeding on flowers every few hours. :) We found the nest months later blown onto the ground in a storm. As soon as the male babies started to develop their ruby colouring, they all departed. I wish I had videoed them, but at the time, had my hands full with my own babies :)

Yep, three eggs now. The site said the third egg was first observed on the 30th so it would seem they don't lay their eggs all at once. I was wondering how long before we see chicks too, so I looked it up & it takes 5-6 weeks of incubation before the eggs hatch. If the first egg arrived around the 23rd of April (according to the Wood's Hole site), we should start looking around May 27th. The eggs will hatch in the order in which they were laid. Dad's helping out too. I think I saw him bring a peice of food back, but it was unidentifiable. I've also seen them switch off for sitting on the eggs. They had a peice of paper that they were using as a blanket for awhile. They would place it over the eggs while stretching their legs and then tuck it around their breast while sitting. I see it's gone now, so it must have blown off or something.. Yes, I need a life..:) -Chele Here is a link that might be useful: Wood's Hole Osprey

Well, we probably shouldn't get started on the whole hunting vs non-hunting thing because it is too complex and volatile a subject. HAVING SAID THAT,if someone asked me what my stance was it would be simply this: I MIGHT be pro-hunting if everyone who hunted my property first filled out,in detail, a questionnaire completely profiling both their hunting ability and what level of awareness/respect they had for the animal and the life they were about to take. Only through this process of selection and elimination would I allow people to hunt my land, but since that is basically just a pipe dream, and since I know too well the reality of what kind of people hunt near me, I generally utter the word "hunter" with a curled upper lip. The sadness of this situation is that, once again, it's due to human intervention that the predators are no longer here, the deer are everywhere in unnaturally inflated numbers, and the ecosystem is starting to show the strain. And by the way, Scandia...I had a similar experience with a hunter myself in my own woods. A hunter, a man I know, levelled his shotgun at my chest about seven years ago. I was less than 35 yards away and wearing a fuschia colored sweatshirt because I didn't own any blaze orange. When he realized what he had nearly done he said he almost peed himself. I had always been indignant about the blaze orange rule...it was my property and there wasn't anyone allowed back there so by golly I was going to wear whatever I pleased. I learned a valuable lesson from that...I might have been right, but I would still have been dead. Now when I patrol my property I assume I am about to confront Larry, Darryl and Darryl and they all have coke-bottle glasses and can't see past ten yards AND I WEAR BLAZE ORANGE.