You forgot the March Nor'icane (as I call it). Where locally we had near hurricane force winds for hours on end. It' been abnormally warm (and dry) since about April. I have one big tree behind my property that has already dropped all its leaves! I tend to not worry about the grass and let it go dormant in the heat. I DO vigilantly water all recently planted trees and shrubs (those planted within the past two years!). I'm not big on annuals and the a lot of the perennial plant material I have is drought tolerant (everything from hardy Opuntia cacti, to bamboo to yucca). Doesn't look like much widespread rain in the extended forecast so keep watering for now. But you know when it turns around we'll be dealing with record flooding.

I use the Sea Monkey browser and it has a small plug in called Adblock . It blocks most pop ups by blocking the content from displaying. You might want to try it. You can find Sea Monkey at the link below and then get the plug in by clicking on Add Ons on the left hand side of the scrren. Here is a link that might be useful: Sea Monkey Broswer

oldhousegal, I commend you. I'd love to be living that way - as they say "every journey begins with a single step". I found a website created by a grad student from Singapore who is studying "food perceptions" of all things. This entire website is dedicated to unraveling the "great pine nut mystery" (don't you love the internet!). Here is a picture of pine nuts. "S" is apparently what you want. "A" is what you don't want. Similar in size.. posting another pic below which is a close up of "A". close up on PNS (pine nut syndrome) inducing pine nut Funny... Target house brand of pine nuts has only had one reported case of PNS but Trader Joe's has had 69 cases.... maybe I'm not ready to give up on Target yet (maybe I am still being naive to believe everything I read on the internet.... looks pretty credible to me though - will link the website below). Here is a link that might be useful: The Great Pine Nut Mystery

I suppose I'm one of them optimists LOL! Because I think the fact that you got a response at all is pretty amazing considering they were bleeding money and now that is solved, and the site is on the operating table getting an owner transplant. GW has a big purse backing it assuming it goes through without a hitch, and the new owners bring to the table already a large online community which will likely bring new contributing members. I am not blocking the ads anymore, I just wanted to see if it could be done. If the ads are popping up without mousing over them, that is a bug that I can't imagine isn't an artifact of the process of change in ownership and will shortly disappear. I'll give you a made up personal response, which is a parody for entertainment purposes only. No resemblance IRL to anyone, just pure fiction in an attempt to humor you, which we hope won't miss the mark! Please bear with me if you have lost your sense of humor. It sounded to me like you still had it... (Begin Parody)Hi fireduck! We're sorry about that impersonal message we sent. It was just a quick acknowledgement because we care about you, so we didn't want it to go unanswered like other sites do for months. We thought we sorta answered it by letting you know that GW was getting a facelift so we are working on all these problems and are well aware of them. Edit: My colleague says labs got the message too, well, we didn't send it to PC, because you and her posted you might leave, but it sounded like we had PC in the bag, so we didn't send PC diddly-squat. To tell you the truth, half of us are outta here, and I mean gone, and we who are left don't know whose coming or going for the next two weeks. So be patient, please! Whoever stays will be more committed to GW than ever! About that. The old owner lost a boat-load of cash so he's stuffing a couple of $20's in his pocket before the official transition date as he gets into his Honda limo, because he still gets a penny per crap click, but he'll be outta here in a week and will no longer have access to GW. We all love and respect him for using his wallet to bankroll us for so long, so no one is saying anything and we hope that's cool. Please don't be mad at us and please don't leave us for it, since we're all human after you take our computers away from us and we look into the mirror and can't believe it;'s over and wonder what we'll be doing tomorrow to earn a buck. Pessimists have lousy luck growing tomatoes. Come over to our team, the optimists! And give us a break, we have been running this site with ridiculous ads that miss their target so far, and I mean it's like watching Moe, Curley and Larry twisting each others' noses. The new owners won't be pleased, hey though, what's a stubbed toe when you're getting open heart surgery? Did you ever sell a house and have a neighbor come over to complain that the movers stepped on her marigolds in the hellstrip while you were getting in the van to drive away? Yours fictitiously, Yesterday's NOT Management ;-) (End Parody) OK, I hope that doesn't offend, and if it does, please forgive me, let me know and I will edit and delete it because it is meant to be a parody and I have no idea what is happening, and this thread is so off topic (OT) anyway, so whatever we write here has nothing to do with the forum. (What other forum's moderator would let you guys post about leaving and how some things about the site are bad? Don't try that elsewhere. I unblocked everything BTW and am paying attention to the ads which are so ridiculously targeted missing the mark by 180, I can't help understand perfectly well why it is such a good idea to sell. I mean, you were not pleased with how the advertising was being managed that supported the site before: Now new owners that say they have the resources to do a better job are taking over. What's not to be optimistic about? On this site anyone can walk up and join with a few keystrokes, the owners don't mess with posters opinions, and spam is dealt with rapidly, and people are friendly. I like that! One last comment... Houzz are expert webmasters. I fully expect that will make this site a very pleasurable forum to use compared to any other general forums. You can't get the explosive growth they have by offering a second rate product. PC, who has a high opinion of GW and is eternally an optimist because the other option doesn't sound like fun This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Thu, Jan 29, 15 at 12:29