If you're a former composter then you have the routine down - and hanging baskets are difficult to keep moist enough (and if they are, often the nutrients wash out). Around here putting things in pots is about as difficult has hanging baskets because its a lot climate and they dry out and bake the roots. Is the pine bark ground up? The stuff they sell around here in bags are huge mosaic discs off of the Ponderosa pine that come in to lumber yards. They take forever to break down.

The thing with allergies is to be enough on top of them with medication that you can move through the day, and not drug yourself so much that all you want to do is sleep. Rapeseed - do they make canola oil in your area?

It was a pretty drive in today, and I stopped for a quick pizza at a little place that plays CNN in their dining area. There was broadcast a long interview with a fellow from Darrington, Washington, the town that is cut off now because of the big mudslide in Oso. The Darrington folks will have to drive north to the Skagit River drainage and drive out to Sedro Woolley to get back down to the other side of the slide. I grew up west of there and drove that road many dozens of times (I worked in Darrington for several summers), and took each of my kids up there last summer to visit my old office and show them my favorite old fashioned 4-square school building in Oso. Now that enough aerial views are being posted I can compare the places I remember with where the slide hit. For all of my adult years there I was a first responder to fires and mountain rescues up in that region. I imagine friends are working there now, and I imagine I probably lost friends or acquaintances in that slide, but haven't read the obituaries yet. This is the time when having cable television at home would be useful.

Not exactly staying on topic today, am I?

SRS