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 have grown the Red Noodle Asparagus Beans. I found them to be aphid magnets (I mean COVERED with big fat aphids!), which, in turn drew ants. They are beautiful plants and incredibly prolific, no matter how hot it gets. Unfortunately, my family didn't much like the taste and the beautiful red beans turn ebony black when cooked, which are somewhat unappetizing to my group." There is a trick to restore most of the color... all it takes is a little vinegar. The vinegar will turn the cooked Red Noodle beans back to a burgundy red, and make a deep red sauce. If the vinegar flavor is too strong, you can pour it off after the color change. It's possible lemon juice would restore the red color too, but I haven't tried it yet (an experiment I will try this year). If eaten as a side dish, my family likes yardlongs seasoned with vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic powder. Yardlongs cook quickly, so for the best color & texture, don't over-cook them. You can blanch & freeze them too, but due to their low moisture content, they get freezer burn very quickly. I freeze the cut up beans first in plastic freezer boxes, then remove the frozen block & place it in a vacuum sealed bag. (Pre-freezing this way also reduces the chance of seal failure in the vacuum bag, caused by liquid & debris being pulled over the seal as air is evacuated.) The "hollowness" of yardlong beans can be caused by water stress - even if the plants don't show other symptoms. Yardlongs are at their best when the soil is not allowed to dry out. My best year ever for yardlongs was a year of record rainfall; while much of my garden languished during the flooding, only two things flourished - yardlongs, and edamame soybeans. I highly recommend a thick layer of mulch around yardlong beans, to preserve soil moisture locally at a high level. For me, this heavy mulch - along with frequent irrigation - makes the pods consistently longer & more succulent. When picking yardlong beans, be careful not to break off the delicate tip of the flower stalk. That is where new flowers will form, so if you treat those tips with care, you'll get a larger crop. About yardlongs & ants. The nectar given off by the by the extrafloral nectaries (the bumps on the stem below the flowers) attracts several insects. Ants are the most common, and are often the source of the aphid infestations, since they "farm" the aphids. These ants will defend the plants very aggressively, which is probably the reason the plants evolved to attract them. Generally, the ants are only an annoyance... I just thump the pods prior to picking to knock off the ants. But some years, carpenter ants colonize the vines, in which case I take measures to control the ants. But in my garden, wasps and ladybugs are also attracted in large numbers. This makes them great plants to maintain a ladybug population within the garden. If you purchase ladybugs, time their release for when flowering begins, to make them "stay home". Contrary to the hyperactivity of the ants, wasps feeding on yardlong nectar become very docile, almost as if they are intoxicated. I can move among the plants & harvest even when there are wasps there in large numbers. I was stung only once - when there was a wasp sitting on the back side of a pod I was picking, and I accidentally grabbed it. Even then, the wasp only stung me lightly, then flew back to the vines. Personally, I like to attract wasps, since they are valuable insect predators... but if you are allergic to wasp stings, you might not want to grow yardlongs. Yardlongs are just climbing cowpeas (Southern peas) that were bred for their pods instead of seeds, so all of the above pertains to cowpeas as well. Bigoledude, in your hot climate, there are two other climbing beans you might be interested in. Hyacinth beans love tropical heat, and as the name implies, have beautiful fragrant blossoms. There are both green and purple podded cultivars, I would recommend the purple due to their thicker pods. The pods are cooked & eaten much like snap beans... they must be picked young, though, before seeds develop. You might also want to try Winged Bean, which forms interesting 4-sided pods. Not sure how they would hold up, but they might make some really interesting pickles. The flowers, young leaves, and tubers of Winged Bean are also edible.

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.

Refers to antibacterial soaps and chemicals that supposedly sanitize our hands but in reality kill the good along with the bad, thus leaving us naked without our little familiars or personal good bacteria working for us to combat the bad bacteria. While I appreciate the "Madison Avenue" issues, I'm not quite ready to return to the days when infant/child mortality due to amoebic dysentery, cholera, rheumatic fever, measles, and so on and so on was more than TWENTY TIMES what it is today. In Pennsylvania in 1912, the infant mortality rate (deaths per thousand) was 150. In 2012 it was 8. Both figures - 1912 and 2012 - include ALL deaths, not just those bacteria-borne ones. Nonetheless, "the good ol' days" weren't, and for the most part, are a fantasy no less "fabricated" by a DIFFERENT "Madison Avenue" than the fabrications of the chemo/pharmo shills. Sadly, in a world with such extraordinary access to information, it is harder to find THE TRUTH than it may ever have been in the history of human kind. We must all SEEK, and FIND, our own way in this world full of charlatans and snake-oil salesmen. Precisely why I do not share the infatuation with "all things worm", that some do. The TRUTH I find has been something less than "magic". And while I profoundly appreciate fermented food and drink - with all it's "good" little microbes - I have no illusion that the "good" ones will "win out" over the "bad" ones. They haven't throughout history, I don't know why they should now. What "wins" is a strong immune system, and when that fails, "you" die, regardless of whether you use "anti-microbial" soap or not. Paul