Hi to all; I'm not sure how to thank someone on this format; I do not use the computer too much, but I am trying to learn how to respond when someone says something to me. I realized as I was thinking more about the quake , what came to my thought was that because of the phone lines, I could reach my sister in Portland, OR., but could not call my Mom in Los Gatos from Belmont. The one call that reached me was my husband, who did not have and couldn't get enough gas in the car to get home from San Francisco.Now we always fill up at a half a tank down! Because of a gas main leak, Mom had been evacuated, and had I not been able to reach my sister and know that she was safe in San Jose with my niece, I would have been a wreck. Last, because all my Mom's cabinets had pull-out ball bearing drawers, the quake made all the doors fly open and everything slid forward, hit the end of the drawer and were catapulted onto the floor. It made me ask the question whether or not child-proof mechanisms would have been of use. Also, using floral clay to stick small objects down is something she did with the things that were left. I also recall how helpful people were. Stores gave water away for free, neighbors whose power had been restored cooked for others. Mom went and got two elderly friends in the Santa Cruz mountains. They were not hurt but very badly shaken. They lived with her for some time, but the house had to be demolished.

i do not understand, all my emails about this thread that were there yesterday vanished, found them in garbage? things keep vanishing. remember rolling said she put up and thread and no one could find it? well i do what i usually do, i went to her site and went through activity, it wasn't there? bite your tongue out kare ,pillow fetish over? bleahhhh. prezzies margo = scuse, randoms most can be ordered separate of their mates.

The little gnatties like to feast on dead and decaying plant matter, and love it moist. Yep that 'covermoss' is prone to sheltering and keeping a colony of the little buggers. I clean up my plants and keep them 'clean' all the time (old leaves removed and no debris left in the top of the pot) and that helps some on not ever seeing them. I housesit for someone and she always comments when she comes back that I have cleaned up and cleaned out every one of her plants... she always has problems with various disease issues and if she would just CLEAN UP she'd have a lot less problems. Also, remove the trash immediately... she would have this big rolling garbage cans and wouldn't empty them for months on end. I remove my greenhouse trash when I'm through and ready to go back to the house. If I run into something like mealy bugs, that gets carried out immediately! (a local nursery has issues with it, anything you bring home from there has to be isolated and cleaned up) Between that friend and myself we have fought this war for fourth winter. I am now 'clean' and she is still having issues (I have also tossed a few plants to stop the infestation and she won't... so she keeps breeding more). If you get mealy bugs in your house and your houseplants; second worse is spider mites; you will have a long and hard one to get that one cleaned up. First picture, if you remove the few leaves you find and remove them from the area then wash up, you will probably get it right there. Missing one fleck, you will find first or second picture in 1-4 weeks. I don't spray because a lot of sprays they seemed to ignore; I killed the plant along with the bugs; and in my greenhouse I am doing semi-aquaculture and sprays/chemicals are not a good thing around the fish. I can tell you insecticidal soap has never seemed to work even if I pretty much drowned the plant in it and it usually has killed the plant at that level. I do 'clean up plants' and 'toss badly infected plants pot and all' ... at times I can find a part of the plant that is almost clean, hand clean a few small flecks off, and put it into an isolation cutting cup-and toss the main plant. In a few weeks either it has gone rampantly infected in which case I toss the whole cup, or it's clean yet and rooted so I can pot it up. I've cried over some plants I've tossed, but. Upper Left, Usually you will see just one or two flecks, underside of leaves, near a leaf to stem join, by the time you see this much you'll be well into the battle. Size of very small salt grains if that big. Upper Right, Well engaged, this is trim this off and remove it; or if the whole plant looks like this it's going to be tossed. Lower Left, if you see these, about the size of two to three salt grains glued together in a string, you have major problems Lower RightMature mealys, about 1/8 inch long, (3mm), and I usually see the matures as a light gray like this. The smaller is white, the mature is this grey, and they are highly detailed. Start checking all the plants around this one and be very serious about check EVERY bit. All it takes is one tiny white cottony looking fleck....

"We don't compost because the process puts the maximum amount of METHANE into the air." No, it doesn't......well, not if you do it properly. Landfills, where stuff gets buried and is prevented from contact with oxygen in the environment, is where a lot of methane is produced. But if you (or your municipality) composts properly, turning the decomposing material frequently to allow proper exposure to air and making sure it doesn't dry out, then only a very minimal amount of methane is produced or released. No biologic body will stay inert, so get that idea out of your head. Depriving that old banana peel of oxygen in the landfill allows it to decompose in an anerobic environment, thereby producing vastly more methane.