Good for you! :) Raising your own birds for table is FAR tastier and healthier than production chicken from the store. It sounds like you have your head on straight when it comes to what counts--raising the bird in a healthy environment and giving him a good life before quickly and calmly doing the deed. :) Be prepared if you will be raising Cornish Cross birds for meat next, though--heed what others on this board have said about them being kind of nasty-messy to raise, and make sure you butcher them on time. Allowing Cornish X birds to live beyond their natural butchering age is cruel, as they eat constantly and gain so much weight so quickly that their legs cannot support them and they go down on their hocks or their legs simply break. :( There was a show on PBS called 'The Natural History of the Chicken', which was a kind of quick and entertaining overview on all kinds of people who owned chickens. It included a guy who kept chickens both for eggs and meat, and he was so dead-on about appreciating the birds for their beauty, contribution to his ecology, eggs, companionship and meat for his table. He butchered his own birds and has a great outlook, I'd highly recommend it. There is also a great story at the end about a little Silkie hen named Liza, it's heartwarming. :) The guy I'm talking about is here, the first 3 minutes of part 2, and part 5, about 1:40 in: http://video.google.com/videosearch?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=the+natural+history+of+the+chicken&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title# The entire show is great, the only part I didn't really like was the part about the guy who kept fighting cocks--sad story and the noise they put in is REALLY annoying. *L* Velvet ~:>

hmmm Gb, bacon? No...here's a funny story, which is absolutely true. I did some work for an exhibition at a nature center where one of the beloved animals was a Vietnamese pot bellied pig named "Galobki" (galumpke? I'm not Polish and this is the word for cabbage roll). This was in New Britain, CT which has a LARGE Polish population, hence the name for the pig. Every year, the nature center had periogi supper, and sold perogis. About two months after the periogi supper, someone called and asked if they still had periogi. The director said, no. The caller asked what happened to Periogi. The director responded," Well, it's all been eaten." There was dead silence on the other end. It turned out the caller was asking about the pig, Galobki, and got the other Polish food confused....

As a significant consumer of viburnums myself, I must agree with dkgarber's interest in the genus, and esh_ga's list of choices presented. I disagree that one should return V. x burkwoodii just 'cause it isn't native to North America. V. x burkwoodii actually hails from England, derived from the fine work of Mssrs. Burkwood and Skipwith early in the last century. It is a hybrid of V. carlesii and V. utile (which are Asian), and was selected for vigor, fragrance, and semi-evergreen character depending on what zone you garden in. This is a perfectly good plant for the bones of any garden, and that's all I'll say about it (since this is the native plants forum). For the original question, big plants that grow quickly and fruit heavily for feathered friends would include: ÂV. dentatum - arrowwood is the most rewarding shrub that requires the least work. There are over 25 different clones available for fall color, fresh foliage, fine flowering, fantastic fruiting, form... ÂV. rufidulum - the rusty blackhaw rewards the gardener with lustrous substantial foliage and great fall color, on top of copious bloom and heavy fruiting. This is a small tree, and can be grown multi-stemmed if desired. ÂV. prunifolium - blackhaw appears nearly the same plant as rusty blackhaw, differing mainly in the coloration of the dormant buds, timing of bloom, and less glossy foliage. It is another small tree that can be grown multi-stemmed. ÂV. nudum - Raisin viburnum (this really needs a better common name) is a versatile big shrub with glossy summer foliage, tons of flowers, fruit that proceeds through an incredible range of colors before finally settling on a deep blue at maturity, and tremendous persistent fall color. 'Winterthur' is the most common clone available. Since one should always plant multiple related individuals (not solely one clone) in order to achieve best fruiting, look for others like 'Brandywine', 'Earth Shade', etc. so that cross-pollination is maximized. With these four native species, you can create a 12 week flowering sequence (mid-spring to early summer) as well as a really long period of fruiting for birds and your enjoyment. Except for the few species that have shown some invasive tendencies (notably V. dilatatum in the mid-Atlantic region), I'd venture to take a go at almost any viburnum you come across to increase your collection.

I just finished A Round-Heeled Woman, a memoir. I wouldn't exactly recommend it, although I did finish it, so at least it held my interest. The author is intelligent, and her writing is often clever. But I disliked her more and more as the book went on (so self-absorbed, so lacking in compassion, such a bad mother), and I was wildly uncomfortable with her "love" life--not on any moral grounds, but because I couldn't relate in any way to her behavior, and thought most of the choices she made were more than a little nuts.