Hey Pirate Girl, I was going to suggest the Glue also.. someone (who studies Opuntias) recently told me how she uses gauze and elmers glue to get them out. I personally use a pair of tweezers or an old triple blade disposable razor... not too sharp to cut me but sharp enough to pull them out. Sorry, I'm sure by now you've gotten rid of them. Unless you keep fussing with it! I had a small type that filled an 8 inch pot and hung over the sites. I rescued it from a neighbor who said they were leaving it out to freeze as they hated it... I took it and was sorry. I put it on a window sill in the living room and all winter long I kept getting the glochids all over me! Couldn't figure out how... Then I made the mistake of opening the window one nice breezy day and that was it! it went out side and never came back in again. The Glochids Blew all over the place! The way I kept getting them was solved one day when I noticed this reddish brown dusty looking stuff on my cats tail... Closer inspection revealed them to be TONS of Glochids! Seemed the cat enjoyed rubbing against it! Be careful where you put yours!

MorZ8, I've had exactly the same last July on splitting about 300 H. sternii pods, many of them before they were ripe in order to package up seed for the HELLEX seed exchange last year. I don't normally harvest until the pods split under very gentle pressure between finger and thumb, but this time I was being impatient to get these seeds in with others I was sending off. Any one who got H. sternii 'Beatrice le Blanc' in this years HELLEX exchange, I had days of numb, then itchy, then peeling skin off the fingers. It was very similar(though more extremedue to quantity) to the effect when cooking chillies, especially habaneros. So be patient and wait until the pods split under gentle pressure, rather than using your nails to force them open and shedding juice. I've never had this off any other species, but then I've probably never tried to harvest so early. Mary, your rash may be phyto photo sensitivity, many plants especially rue can cause this in conjunction with sunlight, my daughter had it quite badly when she was young. Any one know what the chemical basis of hellebore sap is. Cheers Greenmanplants.

Patty, Patty.. see? Oxalis is one of my favorite plants. Do you remember that we even fought once over a yellow oxalis from Ragna? Of course you are her BFF so she gave it to you (fine, Ragna, be like that) :p Nah, they are small and I can tuck them in many places. They are also little devil thugs that like my caliche soil (or any for that matter). They disappear during the summer and come back in fall and spring. Omar

Call your installer and have him change tacking strips at the transition points. The installer supposes to use the right size tacking strips when it comes to stairs, flooring transitions, or certain carpet thicknesses. Most just use "standard" tacking strips for all carpets and all areas. More experienced installers will switch to different size tacking strips in traffic area locations to avoid callbacks. Bending down tacking strips is not a good idea, just have them return and change to the right size tacking strip, it's not a big deal.