Oh geez--how terrible! :( I'm so sorry this happened. Why do people who don't actually own the animals insist on feeding them things?! Keeping my fingers crossed and sending 'get well piggies!' thoughts their way. It sounds like you are already doing everything you can, I can't add any advice. Velvet ~:>

Good advice on pigweed control. This is an annual weed, fairly easy to pull and cultivating/disturbing the soil will only bring more seed to the surface to germinate. It does not deter me from using composted manure in my gardens. A case of the benefits outweighing the downside by a long shot. It is common for manure to contain both pigweed and lambsquarter seed. Why? is a mystery to me. Both of these weeds are pioneer species....coming in on barren/disturbed soil...like in gardens. Our livestock graze on pastures and fields that do not contain any pigweed....yet the manure always has a tremendous supply of these seeds. In moments of lofty thought, I ponder this great mystery! LOL. My current weed problem is sow thistle. I have never had this before in any of my gardens and this year it appeared by the millions. I think every bird within a hundred mile radius feasted on this seed and then came directly to my gardens to dump their load. Sow Thistle is one bad weed. It has a tap root that can go as deep as a meter. It starts out as a little prickly rosette and, I swear, in less than a week it is a full grown plant setting and distributing its dandelion-like seed all over the place. You can't pull it because of the tap root. If you break off the root it comes back again from the root. Unusual for an annual. I am losing the battle on controlling this noxious weed despite spending countless hours digging it out. Just when I thought I was making progress against the Purslane...this awful thing shows up....sigh. Jan

Well, I couldn't get him to come back, but my GC said that what the tile guy was referring to was a dilute sulfamic acid solution. I looked into that and did it myself. The first time, it was too dilute, so I ended up going over it three times, with a thorough rinse in between. The color evened out, but it is still lighter than I'd like. It doesn't look bad as it is, but when it gets water drops on it, it looks just right. Now I'm trying to figure out if I should seal it (with 511 or something else? that's what I used on the walls and it didn't change the color) or if I should go whole hog and use a grout colorant? I understand that if I seal it and don't like that look, I'd have to remove the sealer in order to apply the colorant. I've looked into Aqua Mix, I looked at the bottle of Polyblend Grout Renew at Home Depot. I understand Mapei has their own product as well. How on earth do I decide? All I want is a dark gray. It's a very small room, so whatever I do, even if very tedious, won't take that long. We are not living in the house yet, and have another bathroom, but I'd really like to be done with this! Thanks for any insights.

The last pig roast I went to had the caterers start a fire, in a small pit, about 4:00 AM. They put the pig on a hand operated rottiserie. Acutally, it was a half pig, because I would guess the whole pig to go over 400 lbs. They tended to that pig until about 4:00 that afternoon. Then they took it off the rottisserie and put it on a big platter, along with a couple of sharp knives and let everyone go at it. OMG !!!! They had freshly baked loaves of Italian bread, all sliced up, and slices of sweet onion, (there were other things, but that's all I needed). That pork was so juicy and flavorfull that I actually thought I had died and gone to heaven. Just thinking about that afternoon gets my mouth a-waterin.