I give up. It's snowing, a lot! I ran out and took cuttings from some of the inground brugs. Nothing's labeled so I have no idea what is what. I'm going to lose a boatload of passifloras which really has me upset. This just might be the last straw for me. I might be sticking to small tropical, like succulents from now on. Temps should still be in the 60's during the daytime here, not snowing!!!!! At least I'm not in Western MD where they are expecting at least 10 inches. The ski resorts aren't even up and running yet!

My one friend had a big problem with cats coming and leaving 'gifts' in his flower bed, he cured that one by planting a bunch of cacti through-out...unfortunately, now they come over and spray his front door...I guess they're getting their revenge. As far as the puppy problem Marcia, have you considered a training collar (if your son wouldn't object). Electro-shock therapy...it may sound drastic, but it works very well if used properly. If you do consider this you may want to see about borrowing one, as they are fairly expensive (though it may pay for itself, depending on how much damage the dog is doing) and are available at most hunting related stores that sell dog training supplies. Just so I am clear on this one, we have a shock collar for training our hunting dog, but both DH and I tried it on ourselves before we ever put it on the dog, to see how strong the settings were, and we don't use it on him beyond what we could take. (Not some strange fetish...just making sure we wouldn't hurt the puppy...LOL!) Uncomfortable, but not painful, if used correctly they are a very useful tool. If used incorrectly, well...I saw a guy using one, and as his dog ran away from him, he nailed him so hard that the dog literally did a flip... :-( For our dog, we put the collar on him, walked him around the perimeter of everywhere he wasn't supposed to go, and then turned him loose. DH had the remote, and everytime the Hunter tried going into the flowerbeds, DH would say "no" and if he went in anyway then he would get a little shock, once he was out, we'd walk him around again, showing him the 'no' areas. It didn't take long and now he's really good. Last year we could take him to my mom & dad's place and he automatically recognized that he could go anywhere on the grass, but he wouldn't go into the dirt areas (flower beds, veggie garden, etc.) He'll be 3 this spring, so still a young dog. Verena

I don't think you can really move them. They have roots that can go down to around 12 or so feet. Maybe you should juat leave them since they seem to be doing fine. Mulch and feed around mid to end of May. Also, if they're more than 3 years old you can take the spears for about a month and a half. Rule of thumb is don't pick anything smaller than a pencil after they start to slow down. Let them go to fern and you should be able to harverst for about 15 years. I have 30 planted right now ( in a bed in the back of the garden) and my first spears started showing up yesterday. I cleared some land behind my house this week and ordered 140 more. If they do well there, (something I'll know next year), I'm planting another 500.

When we purchased the current house in 1996, it had the original GE builders grade dishwasher from 1985. It was very loud and didn't clean well, so we never used it. When the kitchen was remodeled in '06 we went with a new GE Profile dishwasher, as we also were buying a GE washer & dryer. That dishwasher only lasted us a year and was repaired several times (rolling racks and noisy water intake valve), but it cleaned fine. We replaced it with an Electrolux Wave-Touch, but only had it 60 days due to installation issues that could not be resolved, through it cleaned better than the GE. We were then without a dishwasher for about 2 years before we got a Miele Diamante Plus in 2009. In the two years that we've had the Miele, it has cleaned everything well. We don't pre-wash, but do rinse some dishes, pots/pans in the sink so piece of food would go in the garbage disposal, but we don't wash them with soap. On occasion, we will soak and hand-wash an item that may have heavy baked-on food, but that's like once or twice a week. Regardless, on the Miele we use the Normal mode or the Pots & Pans mode and everything comes out clean. Only use the China/Chrystal mode two or three times a year. The Express mode we don't use, since it only washes for 5 minutes and then does two 5 minute rinses (we found this 5 minute wash is not long enough to clean a full load). I check the bottom filter once a week and clean it out, but it hardly ever has anything in it.