Welcome to the Carolinas! I'm a native of the area and can honestly say you are going to love gardening here!! I'm constantly amazed at how well plants do that all of the things I read say will die off during the winter. For instance, my herb gardens never see the die off that I expect. I've planted many impatiens that come back year after year. It's a wonderful place for people who love to garden. A recommendation for a store to visit: Try Kings Nursery just outside of Charlotte in Stallings NC. They have one of the best selections I've seen in the area. They carry unusual houseplants too if you are building that collection back up. Start to look for nice selections of plants in March, most places have decent shipments start then. By April, the gardening season is in full swing. The clay can be a challenge. I'm in Indian Trail for the next couple of weeks, I have a new house under construction in Kershaw SC. Here I have yellow "Bull Tallow" clay and it is almost impossible to work with. The first year in this house, I pulled out the tiller and spent a small fortune on dirt, but no luck. This past year I gave in and did all container gardening and had great results. The new house has sandy loam, and I'm much looking forward to that. I'm going just far enough south to get a sandy consistancy to the soil. And I'm really excited to have a "blank canvas" to work with. Good luck and happy planting!!

But what a pretty Cuban it was! Those hints of green, just lovely! They might not be good for our native treefrogs, but they're still very cute. While that one was a Cuban, and they're easy to tell apart from some of the natives (such as the green treefrog, squirrel treefrog, and some others), there are natives that look very similar--with a larger size than the green treefrogs, grey and brown patches on the skin, and even the bumpy warts--but are less common than GTFs and don't necessarily have the same range. So don't use those features as determining characteristics! For me, it's the shape of the face/snout and the eyes that give the CTFs away, at least in the adults. Or, if you see a five inch long treefrog, you know it's a female CTF. But don't go around killing the things unless you're sure you know what it is. The skin of pretty much all frogs is toxic and irritating to some degree, and they all get eaten. And they all squirt you if you bother them. CTFs are not horrible monsters within the frog world or anything, they're just bigger than our native treefrogs and have been more successful here. But, they are much more cold sensitive and that has been their limiting factor. Is there a point to destroying these? Well, I used to think so, until I realized just how bad the situation was. Now, unless they can catch and release sterile males or something tricky like that, I don't think there is a point... here in SF. But, when you're talking about places that have yet to be invaded then it makes sense. The individuals that survive in places with light freezes are already the exception to the rule, and if you remove them then it takes longer for new frogs to replace them and establish themselves, because most individuals will not make it through the winter. Or so the theory goes. I never froze them, though. A dollop of orajel or anbesol (the kind without menthol) or a benzocaine spray is generally regarded as being more humane since these are tropical frogs that do not necessarily experience dormancy in reaction to cold and are possibly suffering in the freezer. The pain reliever numbs them, and then kills them, and they don't experience pain.

I have successfully 'stocked' toads in my yard by building a small pond - mine is really a kids' wading pool sunk in the ground - and moving toad eggs into the pond in the spring. The kids and I then feed the tadpoles fish food to make sure there is enough food for the large number of tadpoles, cover the pond with a fence to keep out birds, make sure it stays full of water, and we raise a couple hundred toads each summer. If you have at least a few acres of woods, fields, or even large gardens in a place without too much traffic, I'd say you have proper toad habitat. I think excessive traffic or a preponderance of lawn probably makes an area less than ideal for toads, since they are often killed by cars and lawn mowers must kill a lot also. if you have a suitable area and no toads it is probably because there is not a good place for them to breed nearby. MOst amphibians, american toads included, need ponds or puddles that last at least a couple of months and don't have fish (and aren't ruts in a path that ATVs use). I happen to live perhaps 1/4 mile from the nearest ponds (which are full of toad eggs each spring) and used to have only a few toads. We now see lots of toads in the yard. I think the majority of toads, like many other amphibians, stay pretty close to their breeding ponds throughout the year. A few probably wander far, but you see far more toads near the pond than away from it. I try to collect only those toad eggs that are in a spot where they are unlikely to survive. I know of a couple of large puddles that each spring see hundred of toad tadpoles, but tend to dry up leaving masses of sunbaked tadpoles. Knowing that their chances aren't great in the puddle, I don't mind collecting a bunch and taking them home. If I am early enough, I may also collect some eggs, which are easier to catch. I think this method is the best way to stock toads in your garden, since you are sure to get a local species of toad and perhaps a few types of frogs as well. I am sure that I occasionally get a few spring peepers and wood frogs mixed in with the toads. I think it probably takes a couple of years to get full sized adult toads. Each summer we see masses of extremely small toads which seem a year or two from full size. Right now they are small enough to fit on a quarter.

I've read these forums off and on for several years now. It's amazing how many searches for gardening info bring up Garden Web forums! I bought my first house last fall and decided this week it was time to register and join in here. So many wonderfully talented and knowledgeable gardeners here! And, then, I find a forum specifically for Okies! One of the things I liked best about the house when I first looked at it was the backyard. There are just all kinds of plants. I have to wait to see what many of them are, although my neighbor next door has clued me in on some. The neighbors have a landscape pond in their backyard. One of the things I expected to miss about my last apartment (lived there for over 10 years) was the landscaping, complete with ponds, a stream and lots of wildlife including frogs and toads. I was thrilled to find out that the neighbors pond has frogs in it as I love listening to them. They were worried that the new owner (me) might object to having to hear frogs croak. I think we both got lucky! The backyard slopes severely and has some sort of evergreen planted all around it. Over the years many of lower branches have been trimmed off due to disease, according to the neighbor. Now they are very tall with foliage only at the top. Quite a few of them suffered a good deal during last winter's ice storm. There's still at least one sizeable branch that is broken and needs to be cut off. A couple in the back aren't broken but are badly bent over. I'm sort of hoping that the bent ones somehow magically recover as the birds and squirrels seem quite fond of them. I have already counted at least 15 different species of birds in my new backyard, and that doesn't include mockingbirds which I have seen in the front yard. I also saw a tiny mouse near the back fence a couple of weeks ago when I watering a spot that has some irises and a crepe myrtle. Last Monday evening I saw a baby rabbit in the neighbor's yard by my garage. Some of the plants (many of these I can't verify yet, just going by what the neighbor tells me) include crepe myrtle (3 in the back), a Rose of Sharon, irises, hardy hibiscus (looks like 4 of those), daylilies and some other lily the neighbor wasn't sure of the type, clematis out front, what appears to be a lilac someone tried to chop down that is coming back but is probably too close to the house for good air flow, and some boxwoods up next to the front of the house. The boxwoods look nice but stink so I am going to try to relocate them farther from the house in the front yard and create a flower bed with them as a back drop. To replace the stinky bushes up close to the house I have already acquired two blue hollies, four mini roses, a peony, azalea, hydrangea, blue lilac, and a romantica rose. I'm probably going overboard, but my gardening for the past 20 years has been limited to pots and whisky barrels on an apartment patio, and I'm just so excited to have a house with lots of room for gardens now! My biggest problem is that a large part of the backyard is heavily shaded due to the evergreens, and, especially around the perimeter, there isn't even much in the way of grass. Lots of weeds in the areas where there is grass. I'm looking forward to finding out all the creative gardening things I can do with my new house! I've probably rambled on long enough now. Going to leave work early today to have lunch at the Arts Festival then home to plant and transplant! Debra