ooooh yes, Marianne, anyone could make room for an auricula, even the common old border ones. Sympathies, though, I know how hard it is to feel responsible for someone else's treasures. But hey, you must have given lots of stuff away - I know I have....and always, in my mind, is a clear hope that my enjoyment gets shared - absolutely not a test of someone's gardening skills. I shouldn't be speaking for your friend but even so, I would be really surprised if he was likely to come back and check - not least because you are so obviously a good and conscientious gardener. How long have you had the martagons? It is my understanding that they can take at least a couple of seasons before they bother to send out a flowering stem as they have a protracted sulk at being disturbed. Be kind to yourself, Marianne, and give the lilies more time too. If not an auricula, get him some trillium seeds, that should keep him on his toes.

Hi Diane: I'm very impressed with your Jude ... so healthy and tons of blooms in your alkaline clay. I have alkaline clay too, and roses grafted on Dr. Huey are awesome bloomers at the rose park, 15 minutes from me. My neighbor put a row of hybrid teas grafted on Dr. Huey, our soil is limestone clay, pH 7.7. He was cutting them for the vase everyday, dark green leaves, 100% clean, non-stop blooming. But only for 1st year, our zone 5a winter killed them. Hi Andreajp: Per your question of "Do grafted rose have an expiration date?" It depends on your soil/climate. In my zone 5a wet clay, grafted isn't best due to: 1) My neighbor planted his grafted hybrid teas at ground level, our -20 F winter zapped the bud union. 2) I buried a grafted hybrid tea at 4" below ground level. Dr. Huey doesn't like my wet clay, and declined. My hybrid tea went from 100% clean in the pot, to BS like crazy in that wet clay (mulched with leaves). Knock-outs in that wet bed lost their Dr. Huey's roots completely (these were planted 6" below ground). Knock-outs planted at ground level elsewhere retained their Dr. Huey. 3) The lifespan of Dr. Huey in my cold zone 5a is very short, the rose park replaces their HT's beds constantly.. the only ones that stay long are hardy Austin roses. Niels in Denmark, zone 5b, made the same observation that grafted doesn't last long, except for Peace hybrid tea. I checked in HMF and found Peace have thousands of descendants. Lots of descendants mean it can be grown easily from seeds, and root easily. Jude the Obscure has only 1 descendant, hard to root. Kim Rupert (Roseseek) in a dry and hot climate report that grafted on Dr. Huey lasts very long, like 80 years. In our cold and wet limestone clay, Dr. Huey lasts 2 years max if buried too deep. Everything decomposes fast in my limestone clay, lime is used in the old days to corrode corpses. Kim has shale clay, where imprints of ancient fossils are preserved ... he reported that nothing decomposes buried in his dry clay.

Finally got around to cleaning the fridge out. The pile got: 1 qt. rancid vegetable oil six apples in various stages of wrinklehood two black and mushy bananas three unidentifiable fruits that were quite squashy 2 slices dried out cheesecake: 1 chocolate, 1 raspberry 2 c leftover lo mein 2 c rice that had gone all green and fuzzy 2 c chicken and snow peas (very long deceased) 1 package very dead snow peas 2 c green and yellow string beans 1 baked potato 1 c spaghetti w tomato sauce 1 c quartered roasted potatoes 4 lemon peels a case of low-carb fruity drinks (some vitamin-enhanced) that we didn't like some paper plates with traces of cat food a handful of paper towels All whizzed up in my blender into one of the most godawful-smelling greenish-brown buckets of gunk I've ever had in my kitchen, and poured into the middle of the pile. The microherd eats well tonight! (Well, not so well on the artificial sweetener, but hopefully those will just break down harmlessly.)

Moni, I do have chickens. I let them out for 6 to 8 hours a day but they are no match for all the hoppers. No matter how many they eat, more keep coming. Here, we often have hopper infestations numbering 10 to 15 hoppers per square yard in the yard and garden areas, but many more per square yard in the pastures. We have 14.4 acres. Do the math. lol I'd have to have a whole lot of chickens to control them all. The chickens eat the hoppers outside the garden. I cannot and do not let the chickens free range in the garden at this time of year because they prefer the taste of watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers and tomatoes to the taste of grasshoppers. The tough part with grasshoppers is that no matter how many you kill in a rural area, more just move in from next door. When you have huge hordes of them migrating through thousands of acres of grassland, you cannot stop them all. They are most attracted to anything still green. Obviously, out in rural areas where ranchers cannot irrigate all those acres of native grassland used as pasture for cattle, the hoppers flock to yards and gardens watered by residents. Grasshoppers were bad in NE and parts of northern OK very early this year. I remember that one of of forum members who posts here as Jcatblum had hoppers all over her market crops long before I saw a single one here. It is likely her crops were green and beautiful and healthy and the hoppers migrated to her fields to feed. That is how it is in rural areas. The best hopper control I've ever had was guineas, but we don't have them any more. I miss them terribly, but the heartbreak of getting attached to them and then losing them to predators is too hard to bear so we quit raising them. After that awful year when we had the cougar issues along with a large coyote and bobcat population, and lost 30 or 40 chickens and guineas in one summer (all our neighbors lost ALL their poultry that summer too, well over 120 birds), with us sometimes losing as many as 4 guineas per day......(sigh). I just think there still is too much wildlife here for free-ranging guineas. They are too loud for their own good, drawing attention and predators, and roam too far. Our neighbors never minded having the guineas scour their pastures for grasshoppers, but once the predators knew the guineas roamed in those tall grass pastures, they also knew where to lie in wait and get them. I'd get guineas again in a heartbeat if I could keep them alive, but with all the wildlife management area here...and wildlife that freely leaves it to roam at will hunting for food, guineas are a poor investment for us. Bon, That is so true. We moved here in 1999 following horrible grasshopper outbreaks in Texas for that last couple of years before we moved here. The grasshoppers were just as bad here in our early years. In 2003, a year in which our total rainfall was less than half our annual average, the grasshoppers ate everything they could find....grass, flowers, perennials, shrubs, vines, fruit trees (leaves, bark, fruit) etc. This was after they'd already devoured the veggie garden. Then, when they ran out of their preferred food, they began eating the cotton pillows on the porch swing, the fiberglass window screens, the cotton rag rugs on the wraparound porch, the dogs' blankets in their doghouses in the dogyard, etc. Nothing was safe from them. In an average year, I apply a natural organism, Nosema locuste at hatch time in spring, and it begins a cycle of destruction that helps keep their population very low on our property. In a year like that, I don't really have a lot of damage from them. But, that's with average or above-average rain, and in those years they don't migrate around in huge mobs. In an hot, dry year with drought like we are having now, they are virtually unstoppable. Kill a thousand today and you'll have two thousand rush in tomorrow or the next day to fill that vacuum. Products that contain Nosema locuste, like Nolo Bait and Semaspore are wonderfully helpful, but they aren't a quick kill, and they are most effective when grasshoppers are in the early instars (roughly 1/4"to 1/2" long). It is best to not treat the tiniest hoppers that just hatched, but to wait for them to reach the third instar. Or, put out Nolo Bait several times over a period of a few weeks. That's what I usually do. These products work best for me when applied in April through earliest May, in a normal year with normal temperatures. Semaspore and Nolo Bait have a short shelf life, and the cannisters or bags come with an expiration date printed on them. Thus, I try to wait until right before I need any to buy it. They also work best in cool spring temperatures. Next year, I will buy some in April and put it out whether I think I need it or not, probably weekly or maybe every other week for a couple of months. This year the big hatch was really late here....in June I think. I suspect May was too hot and dryfor them, but I'm not sure, and then all that rain fell in latest May and earliest June and all of a sudden hoppers were hatching everywhere. One way that Nosema locuste is so effective is that it will reproduce in grasshoppers affected by it. Then, because grasshoppers are cannibalistic and will eat each other, the Nosema locuste in dead grasshoppers will sicken and kill those hoppers that eat their dead bodies. So, Semaspore and Nolo Bait are a gift that just keeps giving. Nosema locuste also kill crickets and Mormon crickets. At the same time those hoppers were so bad here, an acquaintance of mine lived on acreage west of Fort Worth, and grasshoppers became a huge problem because she grew really nice pasture grasses for her horses and the hoppers would destroy those pastures. At my suggestion, she purchased a 50-lb. bag of Nolo Bait and applied it. Even though it was pretty late in spring or even already was early summer, she had incredibly wonderful results and was thrilled. Often it appears to be more effective the second year when the disease organism has had time to infiltrate huge numbers of hoppers and spread itself around your property. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Info on Nosema locuste