For what it's worth here is what I do. I buy an organic alfalfa based pellet fertilizer made locally in Kansas City called Bradfield. I put one or two cups to the dripline of each rose and just lightly scratch it into the mulch. I don't pull the mulch back at all, just scratch the pellets lightly into it all the way to the dripline. Then immediately, I use my EZ-Flo Fertilizer Injector filled with my John's Jungle Juice recipe and hook it up to the drip irrigation system I have installed in each bed. When I turn on water it goes into the bottle of the injector and dilutes and mixes the Jungle Juice and sends it down the drip irrigation to each roses own watering shrubbler. There the water/fertilizer mix begins wetting down and mixing with the alfalfa pellet fert and it all eventually makes it's way down in the soil to the roots. The fertilizer in the injector is usually completely out in about 2 hours or so and I just leave it going with just straight water for another hour or so to soak the fertilizers in and water the roses at the same time. I do all this about 3 times per growing season April-September/October depending on the weather forecast. I don't fertilize at all after October so the plants aren't encouraged to add new green growth that will get killed by the impending freezing temps that start in December. My roses love this technique and are as healthy and vigorous growing and blooming as they can be. Going into wintertime it is very important that your roses be as healthy as possible and have no disease issues as well. I rarely ever lose any roses to winter and I don't winter protect very much or many roses at all. I just rely on the natural leaf fall from two large oak trees to gather in the rose beds in the Fall. In Spring I use my leaf blower and blow out the leaves. Then I gather them and put them in a large metal barrel and use my weed whacker to chop them up fine and then spread some of it all over my rose beds as mulch. It makes an excellent mulch and it only costs me a few hours work rather than real money that way. This system works for me quite well. A master rosarian visiting my roses this past Fall accused me of using steroids on my roses because they were all so large, vigorous, and healthy, so I was quite pleased and feel I am on the right track taking care of my roses and making them the best that they can be. Just my two cents..... John

B: 1 egg, 2 egg whites, deli salsa, grilled corn omelet, coffee S: coffee and a granola lemon bar (my friend was an HOUR late-grrrrr-so I got hungry and chose the most healthy thing I could find in the coffee shop case; what a waste of calories!) L: 1 cup cottage cheese mixed with finely diced tomatoes, green onions, cilantro, and spicy spices S: 10 pretzels D: Taco salad: 1/3 c refried beans, 1/8 c. shredded cheese, lot of shredded lettuce, tomato, ¼ c cottage cheese, salsa, 120 cal worth of baked chips on top. S: Arg. Lays Baked BBQ chips, 2 handfuls, and a ½ c of fritos. I hate having chips in the househate it! Salty snacks call to me. S to redeem myself: one red delicious apple. ----------------------- Marci~ It must have been the moon or something. I went on a snack hunt as well yesterday. Did some damage, but am back on track today. ...That's a cool pic you took, but I can see the damage the algae does. It's sounds like a nightmare to try and get rid of! Too bad someone can't harvest it and market it as a health food. JEN!!!!!! Start posting your menus NOW that Tara is better. I know when a kid is sick, hard hard it is to stay on track! You're tired and then fixing carb-y foods for sick kids is SO tempting. Is there anything more enticing than the smell of baking bread or toasting toast? :) Just start over...TODAY! I'm lining up all my pairs of boots to kick you in the hind-end...and I have a quick a few pairs! DeeMarie~ That endo appt sounds like REAL KINDA FUN!---not! We better ALL light a candle for your other tooth. You have a great attitude about it tho'. It's sounds like you're going to healthfood boot camp at work! Bon Voyage!!! NHSuzanne: I'm curious. Do you guys get ticketed if you don't take care of the noxious weeds? I have some property up north and if I don't clear the Canadian Thistle every spring, the fines start! The county fines people a 100 or more dollars a day for noxious weed spread. Now that's motivation to do yard work, eh? Needless to say, I've never gotten fined. We're expected to have a hella wind storm tonight. Remember last year when we were out of power for days? They're saying this one won't be as bad. That was a 10 and this is supposed to be a 7. I'm bringing in wood today and getting the candle and flashlights ready. And we're all sleeping downstairs tonight. There are 200 foot trees next to my house and they DO fall occasionally! If I'm not on tomorrow, it'll be because I have no power! Short story: Yesterday, my DD in college called me. She says, "Mom, I have a problem..." Well, I am thinking the worst, but then she tells me that she's babysitting a friend's offspring and that the baby has been crying for 40 minutes. I can hear the baby on her shoulder crying its heart out. 10 minutes later, we finally got the baby quiet--air in tummy or overstimulated; I'm not sure. Dimly lit room and some pats on the back, pressure on the tummy, etc---but talking my DD through that baby's crying spell gave me the strangest feeling. Now I know how my mom felt when I called her with my colicy babies! It's tough not to BE there to help! Is Raeanne on her wine tour in CA already? And where's Maddie? Patti? Tikanas? JOHN???????? Halloween is almost here, so let's get motivated to step away from the candy. Anyway, have a great day and stay safe!

jemdandy - You're right, sorta.... It's a huge mistake trying to convert dry volume cup measurements to an exact weight, especially when people confuse liquid measurements and dry measurements, and dry measurements with scale measurements. But there are other reasons. There are NO standards for the actual size of a "cup" to manufacture a dry 1-cup measuring cup in the United States. You will find they vary in size if you were to test enough varieties of them - especially when you get into novelty shapes (such as a heart-shaped dry measuring cup made with ceramics - and you discover your recipe was altered/failed because that "cup" was bigger/smaller than your usual measuring cup). Take a 1-cup dry measuring cup (one that has a flat rim and you can level off the contents) and fill it by dipping it in the flour and dragging it up the side of the bag/container (a common method) and weigh that amount on a scale. Now, aerate/fluff the flour and spoon it into the cup and level (the preferred method) - and measure that amount. Years ago it was recommended you sift the flour before measuring it, so try that method and measure it. Some people bang the cup of flour to settle it, then add more flour before leveling it off, or tap it with the leveling devise to settle the flour and add more - and both are incorrect methods which will add anywhere from 10-20% more flour per cup. Some people don't bother leveling - just give it a shake and eyeball it.... Every cup of flour measured by each and every person weighs something different and can be as much as 1-2 ounces of weight different. This is why when you give 10 people the same brownie recipe to make for a bake sale, the finished brownies will vary greatly due to the use of volume measuring tools and the way people use them, and don't even get me started with the inaccuracy of baking pan sizes..... ***The reason recipes work using this highly inaccurate method of measurements (cups and spoons) is because it's a ratio of one ingredient to another more than the exact measure. So you can make a cake, as an example, using a professional-grade stainless steel dry measuring cup, a coffee or tea cup out of your cabinet, a canning jar (an old favorite before measuring cups were readily available), or any other container you like, as your dry measuring devise as long as you keep to the standard ratio of ingredients using the same measuring devise, and don't fill the baking pan more than 3/4 full of batter. So you can make one cake or a hundred cakes by sticking to the ratio of ingredients. A standard plain cake has, by measure (whether by dry measure or scaled measure), one-third as much fat as sugar; two-thirds as much milk as sugar; and about three times as much flour as liquid (bakers ratios or percentages). This is why you might not get the same results using grandma's recipe. She may have used a large coffee cup or a mason jar for measuring, while you are using a cheap set made in China from the Dollar Store that are much smaller than what grandma used. Your "let's say the weight of one cup of flour was 6 oz." is off already because there are no standards for the weight of a cup of flour, just some "suggested" amounts. King Arthur Flour used a 4.5 oz. (weighed on a scale) measure for a cup of flour in their first cookbook and changed their mind in another to 5 oz., while other "experts" use a 5 or 5.5 oz. measure for a cup of flour. And now your 6 oz. arbitrary measurement.... Who's "right"? The weight per cup of different kinds of flour vary as well.... A cup of whole wheat flour weighs more than a cup of National brand of bleached all-purpose flour, which weighs more than a cup of Southern All-Purpose flour, which weighs more than cake flour. This brings us to the moisture content of flour, which is unstable and will contribute to the weight - or lack of it - of a "cup" of flour. This is why we give a generalization of 18-20 cups of flour for 5-pounds. Even if you use a scale weight as the "exact measurement for a cup of flour", it too will be flawed due to the amount of moisture in the flour, which varies from brand-to-brand, bag-to-bag and home-to-home. And for this exact reason, amounts of flour in a recipe are just a good (or bad) guess. When you make yeast bread and the flour is really dry in the winter, you may need more flour than the recipe calls for, while during months with high humidity, you may need a lot less flour, because we add flour to yeast bread according to the "feel" of the dough, not the stated amount in the recipe. Add to that, the amount of protein in flour, which also varies from brand-to-brand and bag-to-bag. The higher the amount of protein in flour, the more moisture it will absorb. So if you happen to normally use Pillsbury All-Purpose Flour in a recipe and you switch to King Arthur All-Purpose, you will need less King Arthur because it has a much higher protein content than Pillsbury. If you substitute whole wheat flour for all-purpose flour in a recipe, you may need to take 1 T. of flour from each cup.

When I redid my kitchen this spring, I wanted a different solution to the dog kibble storage; it had lived in an old popcorn tin I spray painted black on the outside, for the last 32 years. Storing in the basement or garage attracted mice BIG TIME. So, I found the wonderful company on eBay and had a drawer liner custom built to hold the dog kibble. <http://www.kennedyhardware.com/custom-bread-drawer-liner.html?cat=89> I have a drawer (shallow drawer on top, same size as middle, on bottom) that holds this wonderful thing and it holds 30 lbs of PurinaOne Lamb & Rice kibble. Oh the joy of opening a drawer, sliding back the top, and using the measuring cup that lives in the drawer with the kibble, to fill their bowls! No smell, no rodents or insects, just perfection! One of my FAVORITE things in my new kitchen.