It's been over 6 months since our last deep freeze, so I thought it was about time to give an up-date. All of the Olive Trees showed signs of freeze damage. Many of the leaves and smaller branches turned brown and eventually died. I would estimate that about 1/3 of the outer foliage had some sort of damage. I waited until May before removing any of the burnt looking foliage whatsoever. It's now the middle of August and the trees look green and healthy. The Oleanders and Changsha Orange didn't make it. However, I am happy to report, after turning all brown and looking quite dead, the Climbing Figs made a 100% recovery. In fact, they look better than they have in years (probably due to all the new growth). Looking around the neighborhood, it appears that most gardens suffered similar damage as mine. One can still see some dead limbs and leaf burn which hasn't yet been removed. A few homes lost some marginal hardy plants/trees like Eucalyptus and Sago Palms. But overall, it's now hard to tell that we ever experienced such cold weather. I am now back in Ireland, completing the end of a two-year assignment. If our Olive Trees make it through this winter, I plan to attach photos so everyone can see.

Hi Johnathan, no I haven't tried any fruit tree but next spring I am going to try a few palm tree in my home made box, I had so much good luck with my tomato plants in these home made box who knows what I will try next. I did make one box, well maybe not a box but a 5 gal bucket in to a growth container and put a Chinese Elm in it. Man it grew faster then I thought it would at lest I think it did it was 2" when planted in May come October it was 2 and 1/4 foot . I was going to use it for a bonsai but some one offered me quit a bit for the bucket and elm that I could not turn them down. Very dumb ...I did not get any pictures, I took picture of my tomato containers but not the elm......O-Well! Rick

I'm another who's never heard of Ron Douglas. I was reading in a secrets revealed book about KFC. They talked about the cookers. First you cut the chickens into 10 pieces instead of 8 to have consistent sizes. The oil starts hot and there's something like a 5# (or maybe more?) minimum batch that can be made to have it come out right. It is a combo pressure cooker and fryer, once the chicken hits the oil, it sears and then drops the temperature, then the pressure cooking and rying continues. They got a cup of the coating mix and had it analyzed. The "11 herbs and spices" in there were flour, salt, pepper and MSG. The recipes have probably changed. At least some. The gravy allegedly used to be a complicated recipe touted by Harlan as "pure ambrosia" and so good you can throw away the chicken and eat the gravy. After selling out, they went to a simpler recipe and Sanders called it "wallpaper paste". I will say, KFC got me to appreciate cole slaw. I used to really like the chicken too but it's expensive and I don't get it often. Haven't had it now for years. One of these days I'll have to get some again and see what I think.

@mamapinkey: Abridged answer: arguably any detergent in any temperature will clean better in soft water vs hard water, all other things being equal. Long-winded version: Soft water cleans everything better at all temperatures, by virtue of being soft water. This is due to the lower mineral deposit content in soft water. So the softer the water, the closer it will be to approaching distilled water (which, by way of comparison, is the ultimate soft water, with 0 parts per million (ppm) mineral content, since distilled water is created from condensation formed by steam, so there's nothing in it but pure h2o). The mineral deposit contents of your water hijack your detergents. The detergents latch on to the minerals instead of making their way to their designated destination (the dirt in your clothes), since the minerals will always get to the detergent first as soon as the water touches it. So the higher your water mineral content, the less detergent ends up left over and available to do what it's supposed to do. High mineral content is referred to as hard water (usually 150/200ppm+, depending who you ask). Because soft water has much less interference from mineral content, everything gets cleaner faster, and better, all while using less soap/detergent, and less residue remains after rinsing. Sorry for the long-winded explanation, but figured it'd be good to just put that out there in case anyone is reading who has heard "soft" and "hard" water thrown around, but without much clarification (I absolutely did not know the difference until I started having skin issues due to laundry detergent residue allergies about a year and a half ago). So back to your question: Soft water doesn't really require a detergent as well-built as this one (in any temperature). In either hot or cold soft water, a detergent like this might end up being overkill, as the sheer volume of water softening agents it contains indicates to me that it's designed for use in much harder water. So back to soft water. In soft water, it doesn't even matter, for example, whether your detergent is missing phosphates, which is a huge gripe nowadays (effectively, phosphate is pretty much a glorified water softener...see where this is going?), and you can get your clothes cleaner, in any temperature, with nearly any detergent (all other things being equal). People pay thousands of dollars to have whole-house water softeners installed because it just cleans stuff better (dishes, too), and it's also easier on your washing machine (less mineral/detergent residue). As far as the ingredients go... I'm super excited to see TAED in a US detergent in conjunction with the sodium carbonate peroxide (aka sodium percarbonate), which is the oxygen bleach. The TAED is a cold water bleach activator that's usually just found in Euro detergents (and they've been doing the eco thing so much longer, so their stuff tends to work better, in my experience). I don't use cold water, but think the science behind it is cool, for its own sake. And even though I purchased bulk sodium percarb off of Amazon, I've never been able to get the dosage amount quite right on my own without weakening my clothes (store-bought oxygen bleaches contain too many extra foaming ingredients for me since I use hot soft water)...but I love how well it cleans... And I get excited when a detergent contains a decent amount of it (they've obviously buffered it somehow). Per my original post, the sa8 did not work for me, but I'd recommend it to people who prefer to wash their stuff in cold water, and who also have hard water. I ended up returning my box of it to my dad (braving his disappointed look, lol), since I use hot water and it's very soft @72ppm, so this stuff actually foamed up too much for me for those reasons, which made rinsing difficult (the dark side of soft water haha). And no, I'm not an Amway sales rep. Are you?