When I was a teenager, my mother thought chipmunks were cute. My Aunt next door cut down on the amount of cats & Mom was feeding them (the tree rats). The next thing we knew, there were chipmunks EVERYWHERE. Dozens of them, digging up all the bulbs & everything we planted. Emptying all the bird feeders. Running & playing & most of all multiplying. My Uncles were poisoning, trapping & shooting them until they finally got down to a manageable number. In later years, I had a Sheltie who thought it was her job to be on chipmunk patrol & she took it very seriously & kept them away. My Newf isn't that excited over such a small mouthfull but we have an Eskie who likes organic dog toys (mice & such are organic cat toys). Linda

Cindy, turfgrass is the BANE of modern civilization! It's the most environmentally unfriendly thing a person can do with land, plant-wise... It's an unnatural way for the grasses to grow, requires continual fertilizing (with excess fertilizer running off into storm drains and causing problems downstream), and even worse results from the continual needs for herbicides and pesticides... On top of that, the gasoline engines in lawnmowers are 6-10 times more polluting per gallon of gas used than automobile engines, and to keep that lawn looking good, we have to take valuable "spare hours" out of every week or two and go out there in the hot sun to cut it (and if it WEREN'T cut, and were instead allowed to grow to its natural height, like in a meadow, it would automatically suppress weeds by shading them out -- of course it ALSO wouldn't look like a "lawn" and your neighbors certainly wouldn't be happy about it). You're MUCH better off -- especially if you already DON'T have good conditions for growing grass -- doing as others suggested above and planting shade-loving ground covers, such as pachysandra, vinca, ajuga (there's a low-growing "chocolate chip" variety that's lovely), liriope and others... Along with establishing raised beds between the patches of groundcovers and filling them with perennials that like the amount of light they get in those areas. Bear in mind, also, that you CAN put in some full-sun plants, so long as they're EARLY-SEASON full-sun plants, such as daffodils. I have a row of daffodils all along the front of my house, in their fourth year now and looking better than ever. They get WAY TOO MUCH SHADE in the spring and summer to do well, IF they were active that time of year, BUT daffodils have bloomed and pretty much wilted, foilage and all, by about the first of May, and it's about that time before all of my deciduous trees in the front yard really start to fill out, so they DO get "full sun" WHEN they need it. Think creatively like that and you may find your options virtually unlimited... Just please do the planet a favor and stay away from turfgrass! Happy Grasshating! :) Jeff

Chandra, I've never used their products, never have and never will. Any company that does not list their product ingredients on their label and/or their website doesn't get a dollar of my money. I want to know what I am putting into or onto the soil where we grow our plants. Any tomato plant fed any decent fertilizer is likely to give significantly higher yields than a plant that is not fertilized, assuming the plants receive adequare sunshine and moisture. So their claim of 150% better production or more tomatoes or bigger tomatoes or whatever else they say is meaningless and is just ad hype. Any good fertilizer, applied properly, can give you similar results, and most likely for a much lower cost. I believe the reason they don't list their ingredients is because they want people to think there is something extra-special in their products so they'll be willing to buy them and to pay their prices, which seem high to me. Is there something extra-special in their products? My personal opinion is no, there is not anything there that you can't get in other organic fertilizers. Caveat emptor. Before I buy from a company that is new to me, I check their reviews at the popular watchdog site often used by gardeners. I can't name that website here because it is a competing website and you aren't supposed to mention it or link it here. (E-mail me if you don't know the name of that site and I'll tell you.) If a company has a lot of negative reviews, I avoid it and search for a company that sells a similar product but that gets better reviews. Larry, Thank you. You are so very kind. If eating real bacon is a sin, I'm headed straight for a very bad place! I love bacon. I'd eat bacon ice cream if they made it. (And, yes, I bet somebody does make bacon ice cream) Keith, You are so, so bad! lol I bet Peg has her hands full trying to keep you in line. Busy1, You win the "First BLT" prize! I can imagine it took a bunch of Tiny Tims to make one sandwich. Wasn't it yummy? Nothing says "spring" like the first delicious BLT with your own home-grown tomatoes. I don't know how you'll ever get caught up on planting with all the moisture now in your ground, but I'm sure you'll find a way. It is still too wet to plant anything else here, but not too wet for the weeds to grow, so I'll spend my afternoon pulling weeds. Thank you for your kind words. I hope you know that I appreciate you so much. Diane, I wish you'd been here to have a sandwich with us. I'm excited you're getting ready to plant. You know, once the plants are in the ground, they will grow like weeds. Your plants will be catching up with ours in no time at all. I really believe that. Erod, If I can't eat tomatoes from April through December, then (alas! woe is me!) life just isn't worth living. Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but only a very slight one. Some people here call me the Tomato Queen, but really I am the Mulch Queen. I mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch. I add mulch to at least one raised bed every week, sometimes every day. I mulch my paths. I mulch my flower beds. I mulch the 'pathways' in my dogs' yard so that they are walking on mulch instead of mud, since three of them get to come inside and sleep in the house at night. (The other three sleep in the garage.) I mulch my the soil surface in all my containers of plants. (They get bark mulch for aesthetic reasons.) I mulch my fruit trees when I have enough mulch to do so, and I mulch my shrub beds. If a dog or cat lies down in a shrub bed or flower bed and doesn't move while I'm mulching, I mulch them. (That does tend to make them get up and move!) When I am able to do so, I mulch the ground outside the perimeter of my garden fence to help keep down the grass and weeds so they won't sneak through the fence and into my garden. Last year, I didn't do a very good job of mulching around the perimeter, so I'm going to try harder to do a better job of that this year. Usually I run out of mulch inside the garden and don't have any for the perimeter fence. However, thanks to the bales of hay that were a very lovely gift from our friends, Jesse and Joyce, I'll have plenty of mulch this year. Mulch keeps the soil cooler which is very important once the temperatures are cranking up high. I think mulch is one reason I get high yields from my peppers and tomatoes. Mulch conserves moisture which also helps the plants. Mulches reduces the number of weeds. Most important in terms of having healthy tomato plants and good yields, mulch reduces soil splash which reduces disease. I start out with 2" of mulch on my beds, then add more continually. My goal is to have mulch 4-6" deep on all my tomato beds by mid-June. You don't want to mulch too heavily when the soil is still cold or cool because you want the soil to warm up to a certain extent. That's why I start out with a little mulch and then keep adding more as the ground warms up more. Some beds don't get as much mulch as the tomatoes. Onions, for example, do better if they are able to sort of pop up out of the ground as they bulb up. If they are able to do that, they seem to produce better bulbs than those planted or mulched so deeply that they cannot "pop up". So, I have mulch in the two onion beds, but it is on the soil between the plants and not necessarily over the bulbing part of the plant, if that makes sense. I would never, ever attempt to grow without mulching. Mulch is helpful in so many ways. Best of all, as mulch decomposes it turns into compost. Compost enriches the soil. Enriched soil grows better, healthier plants that produce higher yields. I give compost and mulch a great deal of credit for the very high yields I get in my veggie garden. It may seem like I'm always weeding (it is a very large garden!), but without the mulch, I'd likely spend 10 times as much time weeding the garden as I do now. Mulch also reduces erosion which is ultra-important to me because my gardens slopes downhill from west to east and from south to north. When I first started gardening here, my local rancher friend, Fred, who is a rancher, farmer and gardener himself, gave me tons (I mean literally tons) of hay in big round bales. I mulched heavily with it and it helped get me off to a great start here. I also use chopped/shredded autumn leaves that I collect and bag up in the fall, grass clippings from our own property, and hay or straw but ONLY from safe sources and ONLY after I test it for herbicide residue. I currently have 197 bales of hay undergoing herbicide testing so I can be sure it is safe before I use it. I used to have a compost pile far from my garden (it is still there and I still use it to some extent) but that means continually hauling stuff out to the pile, then after it has decomposed, I have to haul the compost back to the garden. For me, it is so much easier to pile up organic matter as mulch in my garden beds, pathways, and around the edges of my garden and let it decompose right there. In the spring, the decomposed mulch from the previous season is mixed into the beds as I plant. Then, after a bed is planted, I scoop up all the decomposed mulch from the pathways adjacent to that bed, using a compost scoop and put it right there on the newly-planted beds, and that's the start of the new season's mulch. Then I lay down cardboard in the pathways, and start layering on mulch. Otherwise, my pathways are just beds of weeds. So, my recommendation is to mulch like crazy, but not just around the plants but also in your paths. In addition to doing some weeding, I have two rows of tomatoes that need more mulch today, and I have a big pile of grass clippings with which to mulch them. It seems like all I do in May and June is mulch and pull weeds, but both are important to getting good yields. Dawn

"You are right, but this is about extras, not CS. If SM feels that on top of CS and regular necessities SD requires (during her 50/50) that BM is expecting Dad (and therefore SM) to pay for extras, I can see her problem." The problem is that not only are there bound to be plenty of costs for "extras" that are going to be incurred in raising children (I mean, if we're considering anything beyond food ---but not necessarily FAVORITE food, just food--- and, like, Hanes 3-pack basic white tees as clothing and the cheapest uglist Walmart notebook and Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencils as "extras")... but that the definition of "extras" is very debatable... "It would feel like BM considers her husband's money as separate and not to be used for her child, but SM's to be part of Dad's available income. Who would be purchasing the sports equipment if there was no SM, and therefore no item to borrow? Assuming Dad's income was the same, and his CS and custody the same, could he afford this item on his own, or would he ask BM to split the cost? (BM could use some of her CS, or ask her husband to help.)If both parents were still single, how would the item be procured?" I just gathered that there happened to be already in existence in the house an item of the kind that was required, which was not being used by anyone else at the time it was going to be needed. In that case, why SHOULDN'T OP's daughter be able to use it? Is it inconceivable that OP's daughter would loan something to her step-sister in a similar situation? Has that never occured before? I mean, yeah, I suppose that for everyone to be perfectly even and everything to be perfectly fair, there should be two of absolutely everything in the house for each of the girls, no matter how easily worked out a sharing plan may be... just so nobody feels like BM is "getting off scot free" or "taking advantage" of the already-purchased hockey stick (or whatever it is). But why spend the extra money (which Dad would be, since he's presumably already paid for half of his step-daughter's item, we can presume he'd be paying half of this item too) or insist or suggest that someone else (BM) spend extra money when there is a perfectly good item right there, which will not be in use, and which the user of (step-sister) has already agreed to lending? It's not costing step-sister or SP anything to lend it, and if it's damaged it won't cost them anything either b/c Dad & BM would pay for a replacement. The only reason would be to (pardon the pun) "stick it" to the person(s) who would be asked to pay for a second one, in one way or the other. Now, obviously, if the item is lost or damaged, or if OP's daughter will be using such an item more frequently in the future, then it's appropriate to purchase another. But to go around and imply that anything shared in the house that's an "extra" has to be purchased separately even for one-time use is just not very family-like. In intact families, no one would dream of proposing a waste of money (on anyone's part) or excessive consumption (and clutter?) of this sort as a general practice... I guess that's what I find so colossally sad in these blended family situations. That, as much as many SP's regard the situation like the SK's are "spoiled" b/c they have two households, it's just as often that they end up getting shafted b/c everything gets nickel-and-dimed and bickered over to death. And I'm not even really thinking about in the *material* sense, but psychologically... How do you think it feels growing up where every little item or expense you require as a kid is argued over, debated, and you're made to feel like you're such a source of financial burden and your parents arguing all the time and the expenses paid for are all conditional on how well you (or your mom) behave? Like someone's sitting there all "ca-ching! ca-ching!" every time you express a cereal preference that costs an extra 80 cents, or scowl ("deduct a dollar for the "extra"-nice notebook b/c of your attitude! I don't HAVE to do anything for you!")... and you may, perhaps, be in the regular presence of a step-sibling who (b/c his/her parents aren't divorced) doesn't face the same kind of nickel-and-diming, or you feel like you have to run a decathalon of requests and requests-for-requests to DARE to borrow the item of its "rightful" owner, whom it WAS procured for, presumably without much hubub... I CERTAINLY can understand the need to budget to the point of splitting hairs (b/c there's no choice) when funds are tight (but in OP's case it didn't sound like that was necessarily the case)... but when the situation is more comfortable, nickel-and-diming is unnecessary and rather depressing. Not to mention an enormous waste of energy and a veritable minefield packed chock-full of potential explosions at every little teensy turn. (Which, btw, ain't so great for the marriage, either...) Come up with a plan, an agreement, based on reality, decency, common sense, and what you think "family" should mean and general principles of what will/won't be split (or set a dollar amount limit, or an age limit, or limit the extracurricualr activities by quantity). Figure out and decide once and for all on the definitions of "extras" you and spouse agree on and everything should fall into place. If this can't be agreed upon between current spouses, it is not the ex-spouse's fault, and they shouldn't be dragged into the mess. If the CS arrangement is unsatisfactory to both current spouses, seek to have it changed instead of whining/nickel-and-diming/b.s. psychological games. If it's satisfactory to one spouse but not SP, or if expenditures just CANNOT be agreed upon no matter what, then maybe consider splitting finances. But acknowledge that it is the CURRENT SPOUSES who cannot agree on expenditures or come up with a workable plan, so it isn't anyone else's fault or burden to bear if you two can't work it out between yourselves.