Thanks for clearing that up, bug. I thought you were arranging them on a plate, and that made no sense to me. I really should start a new thread but I'll bury my whining on this one. I feel like I am really struggling with my mood at work lately. During my morning drive, I told myself I was going to be positive all day long. It lasted until late morning, when the bossman announced that the office would be closed as usual the dat after Thanksgiving, but all salary personnel would be charged with a vacation day for that day. Well - I specifically asked him about this last month before I took the vacation day to attend the Rick Bayless luncheon. I told him I would save that day for the day after Thanksgiving if we were not going to be given that as a day off. He assured me then that it would be treated the same as it has in prior years. It's really relatively minor stuff, but it's taking all the fun out of my job. Monday morning, he and I had a little disagreement about how to handle a specific transaction. He was all piss and vinegar about the advice I offered; but when I called a total stranger at an outside company, the outsider thanked me profusely for recognizing an error that had been made and reacting correctly. A couple of minutes later I got a lovely email from a customer thanking me for following up on another matter. I feel like I'm turning into Stuart Smiley, "... and gosh darn it all, people like me!" Yes, other people do, just not the one I work for. And what is with Thanksgiving this year? Okay people, either you are coming or you are not. The only appropriate answers are yes or no. "Maybe", "I don't know" and "it depends" are not acceptable at this point, ok? If I get any surlier, Brenda is going to make me drive the combine for her. Heck, we won't need the corn head, I will scare the corn into the hopper! So if you have gotten this far, I have to say that it did make me feel better to get this off my chest. Sorry to end this idyll on a sour note. Now someone needs to get #462 rolling on a nicer one. V. (really, thanks for letting me vent!)

please post on exchanges fall swap

Ilene, Our worst predators for the young keats and chicks are chicken snakes and rat snakes. They are persistent and will work and work and work to get into the guinea house and/or brooder. In previous years, we have lost most of a year's "crop" of keats to snakes or even all of them. This year they are in a cage made of 1/4 inch hardware cloth, and I still am not sure the doors cannot be breached, but we'll work on that today. Sometimes a persistent snake puts itself across the door to the guinea coop like a "bar" across the door so I cannot open the door without letting the snake in. (I don't open the door, but it takes a while to get the snake to go away.) DH and I am in constant (gentle) conflict over the rat snakes and chicken snakes. I want him to shoot every one that gets into the guinea house or hen house while we have keats or chicks. He doesn't want to. I have to convince him that the darned things are going to keep coming back until they have eaten every baby bird we have. Who is right? Of course I am. If you don't kill those predator snakes they will eat every single baby, and have done it over and over again, so he might as well be ready for them. I am thinking about buying a bag of sulphur and putting a band of it around the guinea coop to help repel the snakes. A lot of people swear by it, but I am not sure it helps. Still, it might be worth a try. I checked on the keats every couple of hours today. One died. It was very small and I couldn't get it to eat or drink. (You have to dip their beak in water to "teach" them to drink, and most drink water as soon as you do it. This one wouldn't.) I knew it probably wouldn't make it. So, from 20 to 19 in the first day. It makes me wish we'd bought 25 or 30. Guineas are the best garden helpers, so it is worth the effort to raise a new batch. My three adult males are baffled by the sudden appearance of babies. LOL Carol, I so admire the charity work you do. It sounds like such a wonderful project, making clothing for the needy. We live with such abundance in the country, and how often does one of us complain "I have nothing to wear!" when we have closets and dresser drawers full of clothing? It is humbling to think of people who truly have nothing to wear. Now that the heat is cranking up, I find it harder and harder to spend a lot of time outside. I like to go out as early in the day as possible--often just at sunrise, and then come in during the worst of the heat, and then...back out to the garden after 3 or 4 p.m. or so....I can work in the somewhat shady northeast corner of the garden in shade from about 3 p.m. on. I often stay out until dark. I start putting up tools, etc. while it is still daylight, but by the time I put all the birds in their coops, feed them, let the dogs out of the "dog yard" to run and play before they go into the garage for the night, put cats inside so the coyotes and bobcats won't get them, etc.......well, it is usually after 9 or 9:30 p.m. before I get inside. I often skip dinner because I am too tired to cook. Then (like tonight/this morning) I wake up when DH gets in from work between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m., and then I get up an eat a bowl of cereal or something else simple. On DH's days off, I keep to a more regular schedule and either he or I or both of us make dinner on those nights and I am usually in before dinner. He also helps with the evening animal chores. Once the big harvest of tomatoes, onions, potatoes, beans, corn, etc. kicks in, I like to harvest early in the day. Then, during the heat of the day I can be processing the veggies and freezing, canning or drying as desired. Storms to our west tonight, but they all stayed west of us and missed us again. When the weather radio went off tonight, it was for the county to our west--Jefferson County. It stayed clear, dry and warm here--is currently 79 degrees outside with a heat index of 85 at 2 a.m. No wonder it feels like it never cools off! Dawn

Thanks for the reminder brandon7... because I inevitably totally forget to hit the link to switch over to the "exchange" 'side' of this forum :/ To answer your questions - it has propagated readily for me both by seed (disregarding the self-sowing, I've collected seed from it and sown it in other areas/plots and in the past I've sent seed to friends) and 'runners'. I consider it "predictably invasive" - that is to say, it definitely seeks out "good spots" (rich soil and/or a consistent amount of moisture), but at the same time it doesn't "go crazy" like I've had other types of mint do. It keeps a pretty "tight" growth habit and if you let it do it's thing naturally, it gradually expands its base-site. I put some in here under an outside water faucet and to the east - transplanting plants and rhizomes in an area about 2ft x 14ft (give or take on the length) about 7.5-8 years ago. It backed off from the easterly direction with a preference to go westerly on me and a little bit north (both into "beds" that I was creating to elevate the ground level and re-direct water run-off from heavy rains). In the connecting bed to the north it has spread about three feet that direction, and to the west from the west-most original spot I planted it, it's spread maybe 10 feet or so. Until this year it remained actually with the confines of the "beds"/hadn't "jumped" the dead tree I used for a "border" on one side or the old/rotting landscaping timbers on the other sides. It's only been this year that it has a few runners outside of that area - so it's been an angel compared to other mints in respect to invasiveness in *my opinion*. What do I like about it? Aside from sentimentality? :) It has an "unrefined" strong mint (mint, not peppermint) flavour - unlike many commercially cultivated mint-mints. "Unrefined" does not denote a negative in any sense - it's wonderful - in both scent and flavour. If I were to compare it and commercially cultivated mints to say... chicken (meat)... I would say that the flavour (difference) is like the difference between organic, free-range fed heritage breed chicken, and a hybridized for fast growth (despite genetic problems as a repercussion)chicken raised in a stuffy hot big commercial barn somewhere fed with non-organic processed feed and given hormones, steroids, and who knows what else to get them to grow faster and 'beef up' unnaturally. There are some foods/dishes that mint jelly is "the" thing to serve with - and those dishes I didn't care for in the past - UNTIL I tried them with mint jelly made from this specific mint. It made all the difference in the world. I didn't realize until comparing, that there really is a difference between this 'wild' mint and that which is available from commercial sources - I assumed they were all the same. I can't tell you what the menthol levels are in it - I don't have a lab nor the money to have it assessed against other cultivars (?). It is prolific in leaf production with sturdy stems - all of the commercial mints I'd had before had rather "wimpy" stems by comparison. As I grow it, it is fairly dark green in colour - darker than even Chocolate Mint that I have grown in the past. If it's in full sun, it isn't as dark as part-shade colouration though. It is GREAT for making hard candy - an excellent sore throat-soother and has gone over better than peppermint with me and my kids at such times as needed for such - and tastier than horehound. Also very, very good for sorbet and due to the prolific leaf production, a small patch can yield more than enough for a household. I've passed it along and used it myself also for working away at tree stumps - for those of us that have such and don't want to resort to a long-burning or don't want or can't afford to pay for "stump removal" - if given an indentation or a hole in a stump and this mint added and a bit of potting soil, the rhizomes work wonders naturally breaking down tree stumps naturally - working their way through the dead wood and hastening the process. While I don't intentionally contain it *here*, I have at other places in the past and it takes very little to contain it... the deepest I ever put in any type of "edging" was six inches and never had rhizomes go under that and as little as 2 inches above soil level inhibited them "jumping" with normal trimming around the edging. If not maintaining the edge, then I'd recommend a bit higher above ground level. Clipping back any stems that fall over a barrier is recommended because it is more than capable of taking root from nodes that lay down on the ground. And, like some other plants, the more you cut it - the thicker it gets. I had a friend growing from this stock while she was living on the coast (Atlantic seaboard, not Pacific) and it handled that environment just fine as well - so it's probably sea-air/water tolerant. Pretty tenacious. Geesh, I could probably dedicate a chapter in a book to this particular mint. :) I will try to get all these tidbits "cleaned up" though and re-post to the EXCHANGE 'side' of this forum...