Hi Marie!! So nice to see you!! I hope you are doing well and that your collection had rebound from your loss years ago. It was a hard winter again for us this year and I did have damage to a few Palm trees, but they finally made a come back.. Hoping they will again. You are so funny about my Plumeria collection! I do have it bad and I have been really good about trying to select and thin down, but its not working to well. I do have a few and thanks to LISA! ;-). She has called me out on how many I have since we had a fun contest over there at the Plumeria forum a few days ago. I had to admit how many I had.., It was a blast ! Lisa is a new Plumeria enthusiast and I'm trying to help her along .... We all remember those who come forward and help instead of lurking and being over helping out. It does mean a lot to them and it certainly makes me feel good. So Marie.. Are your trees doing well? Have you added to your COT collection too? I haven't been over to the Adenoum forum lately.. I really need to go over and say hi! I did count my collection the others day since we are changing up my backyard deck area. We made some benches to add to the side yard to place some of my trees on. Some of my friends call them bleachers LOL!!!! I'm really glad to hear from you. I haven't been on the forums to much and I try to get back to say hello to my friends. Just sent Pug a few trees last year and she just sent a pic of how they are leafing out.. I am so pleased.. Take good care!!! Laura

I agree with contacting wildlife and game. We have mountain lions in our neighborhood also. We are in a small golf course community several miles from a larger Montana city. We often find large prints in the sand pits. And not too long ago one was spotted in broad daylight the next street up. They have never bothered us living here though because we have soooo many deer. I am sure they do not go hungry. Never the less, cougar hunters LOVE to hear of where they might get lucky (since obviously they are secretive and hard to shoot). And hearing once the price of a cougar hunting license gives the hunters an extra zeal. Assuming it is legal to hunt them in season that is the way I would go. I also used to live in SO CA and know they are a much greater risk to people than here because they don't have as good a food source. Good luck:)

Hello everyone!!! Hi Greg!!! I have always enjoyed taking pics...I would love to take a class sometime...but I just love looking at things from a different angle!!! I really miss the old cameras...35mm where I could manually work the camera..I do love the digital cameras..but I feel that I had more control from the old timers!!! "trying not to show my age!!!" LOL... Jim..I would love to see pics of those icicles...I find them quite fascinating...I especially love the ice covered tree too! There is a pic when I sign onto the photobucket page...there is an ice covered tree that look like yours..check it out!!! It;s a beauty...but yours was more massive than this one... ncpalm...I wish that it will be 2 months...more like 3 for us...The sabals are very hardy!!! But I'm not going to take a chance on the weight on the fronds...My hubby helps alot...when he needs help tying up the boat during hurricanes...I don't complain...because I know that he will help and paybacks are great!!! LOL... Take care everyone...Happy New Year!!! Laura in VB

Chimaphila likes humusy acid soil in deciduous shade. I've got some growing in my front yard (which is actually better described as the large area between the house and the country road out front -- "yard" makes it sound much more tamed and tended than it is) under a high canopy of oaks and a lower layer of dogwood. Like some other wildlings, pipsissewa can be puzzlingly difficult to grow on purpose. I suspect that it requires, in addition to the soil described above, the right mycorrhizae in the soil (beneficial fungi that most plants benefit from and some plants absolutely require to uptake nutrition from the soil). If you want to try it in your yard, be sure to get a bunch of dirt from the plant's location in the wild and dig it in to the location in your garden where you site the plant. You'll be inoculating the area with the right mycorrhizae by doing this. And I probably don't need to say this, but, if anyone is contemplating doing so, please be extremely careful and thoughtful about collecting wild plants. Many types of woodland plants are becoming scarce due to collection. This is particularly true on the Cumberland Plateau and in E TN. Sherry, that's beautiful country around there. When I win the Powerball I wanna buy a big chunk of land in that neck of the woods. Brandon, I can't recollect when I learned about pipsissewa. My aunt and uncle had 70 acres of woods in VA when I was a kid, and I remember it there, along with Mitchella (partridgeberry) and Lycopodium (ground cedar or prince's/princess pine). I've always had an overwhelming need to know what the names of things were, so I expect I looked it up back then or asked my aunt, who was a nature lover. These days I'm the propagator at a native plant nursery, which has made me familiar with the latin names of scads of plants. Marty