Karen, How did you pick your b.d. and Mother's Day on the same day? Hope you don't get short-changed out of presents, LOL! Of course I'm kidding because as long as family is around, that's the BEST present, always :-)

Good topic! Back in early May, I was planning a big college graduation party for our son (in the state he was graduating, not ours). I called in my final head count from home before we left for the big day and the woman who identified herself as the assistant manager asked me for my credit card number and info to guarantee all this. Not finding this terribly unusual, I gave it to her. Two months later she ordered herself a lot of expensive jewelry with my credit card number. Turns out she was just a waitress, but had a rap sheet in two states for theft etc. The restaurant had never bothered with a background check on her! All this gal needed was a credit card number, name of user and exp. date. When they found her, she had a very long list of other credit card numbers in her posession. Scary! My advice is to be very careful during the holidays especially, when extra help is hired and may not be fully checked out. And keep a close watch on every charge on every credit card bill. Because this gal did not have my actual credit card in hand, I wasn't responsible for the charges, but it took months of credit searches, MANY letters, cancelling our credit card and fiing police reports in three states before I could rest (semi)easy again!

We lucked out north of Santa Barbara, only four inches with another .7" forecast by Tuesday. Santa Maria was wisely designed with many spreading grounds to catch the storm run off. Yesterday, all the sports fields and parks around us were full, allowing the water to soak back into the aquifer which supplies a large part of our drinking water. Today was supposed to be partly sunny, except it continues to be very blustery with scattered showers. My rain gauge shows nearly half an inch today. There is actually, finally water flowing in the river.

You can ask on the tree forum about its benefits and drawbacks as a yard plant in your area on the tree forum here. [https://www.houzz.com/discussions/trees-forum-dsbr0-bd~t_30032[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/trees-forum-dsbr0-bd~t_30032-forum-dsbr0-bd~t_30032) While the interface can be clunky and frustrating to use at times, I haven’t found another source of such great info anywhere else on the web.