Hi, I have no idea what soil conditioner is, so no advice there. Makes it soft and manageable? :-) I don't buy anything to make soil, I compost a lot and scavenge other people's bagged leaves, get free horse manure, free wood chips, free old produce, etc. and just make layers over cardboard when I need to build a new lasagna bed. I have never put peat moss in a lasagna bed. It is completely unnecessary. It really helps to plan ahead to make lasagna gardens, since leaves are a great component in them, but mostly only available in quantity in the fall. Find out who in your area has animals, and get some free manure, the older the better. Ask at the store for the bag of corn husks when the corn is on sale. Get coffee grounds from Starbucks, etc. Be creative. For a lasagna garden, basically put down a layer of cardboard (I have abandoned newspaper for this purpose, cardboard is so much easier to work with and thicker.) Then build layers of various organic materials such as leaves, grass clippings, coffee grounds, finished or unfinished compost, wood shavings, manure, what have you. You can sprinkle on a handful of wood ashes but not much. If you have some spare soil, sprinkle that on the top. I am confused about the mound part, are you saying the soil between your rose bushes is a lot lower than where they are planted? Generally one builds a big area up as a lasagna bed and it is all the same level. If you just mound stuff up in various spots I imagine some of it will come tumbling down again. I never made lasagna beds 24 inches tall, just 8 to 15 inches, and seems to work fine. With roses you will have to topdress with compost and other organic material every year as the layers decomposte and get shorter. Wood chips decompose slower than other items so I like to put that as a bottom layer in my lasagna beds over the cardboard. I like to put horse manure on top of that to help the wood chips rot. Manure also goes well next to leaves. If you are planting big plants into it of course the manure should be aged a bit. Again, I stockpile that and let it sit in large containers and use it the following year. Marcia

Put some damp paper towel in the original container and snap the smelly lid on it and let it sit a few days to absorb the odor if the soda treatment doesn't work. You can also use some wadded-up damp newspaper. This is a Rachel Ray hint that I read on this board some time ago. I used this method recently when I got some rancid flax seeds from the health food store and milled them in my coffee/spice mill. I thought it was ruined - the smell was awful - and I was about to throw the mill away. The damp paper towel worked like a charm. I left it in there for several days. -Grainlady

Mara... I would LOVE to live off-post, but we have 3 chows ( sweetest, most friendly dogs ever ) and most places here at Hood won't let renters have "aggressive breeds" We're allowed to have them on post as long as we keep insurance on them and they don't cause any problems. When we first moved in, the backyard had those old metal poles for line drying, but no line. A few weeks later, maintenance came and took the poles out and we had to sign an agreement to not hang dry laundry to help keep up the appearance of the neighborhood. We have a back porch, but its not covered and is closed on three sides and we back up right next to the housing office haha. I supposed if this load is still stinky, I will just suck it up and them to the cleaners. I really appreciate all the suggestions you all have given me! I have gotten so much help for many problems.. who knew laundry could be so complicated?!

I was in the same class as Stephanie in Ga. Called Hyper-emesis Gravitia. Or Puke your guts out. I was actually hospitalized basically 3,4 and 5 months respectively with each pregnancy. So what works will depend on the person. What I found was that sometimes it wasn't so much "what worked" as much as what wasn't as horrible comming back up. Malt-o-meal came up tasting about the same as it went down. Milk...way too chunky coming up. Citrus burned coming up. Sweet tea and peanut butter toast would stay down. Each pregnancy I had a craving and that would stay down...Watermelon with the first. Orange Hi-C (cannot even look at that stuff now) and Vegetable beef Campbells soup (not beef vegetable soup, but vegetable beef). And lastly the sweet tea and peanut butter toast. Experiment, and if its been longer than 48 hours since she's kept stuff down, then it's time to talk to the OB dr. Compazine worked OK, until I had a horrible allergic reaction. THorazine worked good...then they found out it can cause birth defects. Chlorapromazine worked just ok. But this was 20+ years ago. Good luck, and give her my best. "Morning sickness" is nothing to take too lightly if it is too much. It made my pregnancies VERY high risk. The good thing...baby is a parasite, it will leach off mommy all it needs, so even though Mommy will feel awful, baby will be fine. (usually) Vickey-MN