No Mail today! Forgot about today being a "Postal Holiday". For March we should all be on board and sending to our regular person. This will be the order for the flight path. Poochella, to Suzannie O, to Deni (abitodd) to Liz (rewards1) to Sarah (euphoria) to Theresa to Susan G to Ruth P to beth b to Jody, Nature Farmer to Poochella to compleat the circle. You don't need to send the exact same Mags as you recieved. You can trade off and keep some of them for a while if you want to. just mail at least four. If you are ready and able to mail the first week AND, if your PO will cooperate, you can use the Bound printed materail rate. If you will be later than that please use the flat rate priority envelopes so your reciever is not waiting for most of the month with "nothing to read" Feel free to send older magazines. If we send only new ones we will be all sending the same ones as there are NOT that many ouy there to buy. Anybody want to add any ideas to this... please chime in.

I lurk here, a lot. I don't usually have much to say, although I do enjoy your posts. I posted on GJ for a long time, but that was a long time ago. Things evolve, a bunch of new ones join up, and the forum changes. It is the way it is supposed to be, I think. I am coming out of lurkdom to tell you that I do have some of those tires in my garden. They are painted all sorts of garish colors, and I actually grow vegetables in them. My DH cut them for me, and spent time turning them inside-out for me, and I am not going to hurt his feelings now by not using them. Besides, we have the most unbelievable black gumbo soil here. None of this nice sandy loam for us. God gave us soil that has absolutely no air in it, slick as boiled okra when it is wet, adobe when it is dried. So, we grow in raised beds, and these cute little beds are perfect. Fill them with good topsoil, good compost, and we can grow anything. A tire will grow 2 or 3 nice tomato plants, a couple of peppers, a package of lettuce seeds, or beets, or carrots, or maybe an eggplant or a couple of zuchini plants. I can weedeat the pathways to keep them neat. The tires do hold up very well to the punishment of the weed whacker, and they will last longer than all of us will. I guess I could paint them all green so they wouldn't stand out so much, but it's just a vegetable garden. And my grandkids love them. They each have a little salad garden in their own tire! LOL Janie

The two organic fire ant killers that I use probably are labeled for use around dogs, but you'll have to Google and read their labels and see. I don't use them in the dog yard because we don't have ants in the dog yard. I use them in the veggie garden. The organic fire ant killers are derived from natural organisms that target ants, and I do know people who've used them in yards where both dogs and children play. Conserve and Come And Get It both have Spinosad as their active ingredient. Spinosad also is used in some pet products, like heartworm pills, for example. Most dog breeds can take those heartworm pills, but in the back of my mind I am thinking there are some breeds that can't. Regardless, property used Spinosad products would be broadcast over a wide area and watered in so they wouldn't be lying around on the ground for a pet to lick up anyhow. I use another ant bait sometimes whose active ingredient is Avermectin. Here is some info on Conserve: Conserve Fire Ant Baits Here is some info on Avermectin, which is the active ingredient in Advance ant killer. In the Q&A section, they answer a question about using it around pets. Advance Ant Bait with Avermectin Both of the above ant baits are biocontrols derived from natural sources and biologically they target ants, not pets, but research carefully to your own satisfaction. I use them in gardens, not in dog yards, so I've never researched them for pet use. When used in my garden, which my dogs and cats both are allowed to enter and roam around in, neither the dogs nor cats ever have shown any interest in the ant baits used in the beds.

The climate of the north Georgia mountains is superb for growing a wide selection of conifers, and the higher your elevation, the better. Summertime high temperatures usually stay below 90 degrees F, and nighttime temperatures at higher elevations cool off nicely. The proximity to the Gulf of Mexico ensures plenty of moisture. You have a vast selection to choose from, and it's hard for me, at least, to offer suggestions given all of the options. If you are serious about conifer gardening, I would pick of a copy of "Landscaping with Conifers and Ginkgo for the Southeast" by Tom Cox and John Ruter. They cover huge numbers of cultivars for every landscape situation. For many species (like, say, Chamaecyparis obtusa) they only discuss a few choice plants, but any c. obtusa cultivar you come across will do fine. Same with things like picea abies, picea orientalis, cryptomeria japonica, many pine species, and even some firs. You didn't specify which part of north Georgia you are in, but if your new house is in the northeast part of the state, I would recommend driving up to Highlands and Cashiers in North Carolina. Both towns have some excellent nurseries which carry huge selections of premium conifers. I can almost guarantee you will find more plants to buy than you will know what to do with. Finally, the hemlock trees have been treated for hemlock woolly adelgid. It's hard to tell from the picture, but you may already have a dead hemlock or two on the property. The disease can be contained, but, in my opinion, it's probably not worth the long-term effort. Find some other ornamental trees to replace them with, unless the current hemlocks provide some critical privacy screening or other specific purpose.