I discourage the wrens. I take any sticks they put into a box away as quickly as possible. From the information I've read on the Sialis website, if you let wrens nest, you will soon be overrun with wrens. The wrens will poke holes in the Bluebird's eggs, or toss out their chicks. So if you're trying to get Blues, I would certainly discourage the wrens.

Funny how "journalists" are capable of ferreting out this information only NOW, when it's a done deal. WHERE have these people been for the past eight years?? Where were the newspaper exposes, the 60 Minutes specials, the magazine covers, the political press conferences? It seems time to accept that not only do we have no political representation of any kind, we have no press, we have very little left in the way of citizenship.

If you are talking about email spam I don't get any. I used an address that was unique with letters and numbers which made to no sense at all to anyone or any software they use..... but me. Some people use their name or parts of it with numbers and there is software out there than get your email from that and forwards. Anyone I give my email addy to is told "don't send me forwards". I also tell every one who puts me on an email list to use BBC so the address is not exposed. The few I did get I blocked on my servers email site. The companies that sent me info that I didn't want I unsubscribed and I was told that just lets them know you have a working email. All the companies like that have stopped sending the emails. Always have at least 2 email addresses and use one for family and friends and one for the net. I once got an email with over 50 email addresses exposed. I did the "reply to all" and told them to look at all of their exposed email addresses. I also explained about BBC. One person emailed me about it and asked what BBC is. another guy emailed me and said "where did you get me email address". I told he it was exposed in the list of addresses at the top of his message. He apologized and thanked me for letting him know. That had to have been bouncing around the net months or years.

Hi Emily. The problem with restricting it to the in-house search was the GWeb search engine could not drill down to specific posts within a thread, and Google was....for example. So we got in the habit of going outside to retrieve forum posts. Google web bots had Hostas Forum on speed dial, it seemed! There was some effort to juice it up, but how far that went before the switch to Houzz, I have no clue. ************************************ Here comes the season when hosta emerge, threads on the Hosta Forum three pages long, posts flying day and night. We could tell by the "main" forum page what we had read, what had new comments, and had a good chance of catching all the new threads too. I suppose online spring cleaning dealing with sheer volume of hosta posts by reducing it to a footnote to the paying customers on Google, so we are relegated to "more results from forums.gardenweb.com". As they call it in New Orleans at Mardi Gras, we are the "second line"..... Sigh.....but, I know what BKay says is so true. Only the strong can survive. I'll try not to get to complacent with the status quo. Says Bob Dylan, THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN'