Like the other Texas members, I do NOT feel your pain. Large areas of Texas have been declared eligible for disaster relief because the extended heat and drought have wiped out farm crops and cattle forage. Those big round bales of hay sell for around $80 dollars apiece, and they feed about ten cows for about two days. I feel a little guilty about the water usage (from our well) that it takes to keep our large yard alive...there is a vivid line around the yard that shows where the sprinklers stop---green on one side, brown and crunchy on the other. We have a large pond, and I often think it would be very interesting to have a motion-activated camera out there at night, to see the parade of desperate wildlife. There is a deer that brings her twin fawns out to drink and search for a little grass on the far side of the pond from the house, in broad daylight now. Guess she can't wait for dark in these temperatures. I don't much like hummingbirds (I know, you bird-huggers are horrified) but I finally put out feeders for them after I saw a hummer trying frantically to get his beak into a collapsed morning glory bloom. Nothing is blooming outside the yard. It'll be interesting to see whether the winter brings opposite extremes. Laura

I still have a few, and have had them since first week of July. It seems each year they hang on later. The first few years I gardened and took notice of them, they seemed to have a more defined "season" and were gone by mid- to late-August. Now they are still here until frost (which for me isn't until mid October), but fortunately not in large numbers. For those of us in the north, one sure way to debilitate their population is to have a colder-than-usual winter with NO SNOW COVER. We had one about 5 years ago and the JBs were nearly all killed off (the grubs froze in the ground). That following summer was bliss. But within a year or two they built their population back up. Still not as proliferic in my garden as before, but enough to be more than a nuisance.

nice whaas, novaplant, and rispetto! novaplant, looks like those horses are riding the storm out! we're finally getting some snow here today, it's been a while Pinus strobiformis in pot on left, Picea pungens in ground on right (Helianthus maximiliana, tall plant in middle)

Ginger is a great herb for settling a queasy stomach. Buy and drink as much as you can-look for one made with REAL ginger. It says so on the label. I remember when I was a kid, if any child got a "stomach bug" Dad would buy that person his/her own big bottle of ginger ale, to be kept cold in the fridge. And only that person could drink from the bottle.