OregonWoods, I've heard the horror stories too. One guy reported catching a couple having sex in his orchard. Having heard all kinds of stories, I put some pretty stringent qualifiers on my small U-pick. One of the qualifiers was no children under 13. Mind you, I'm all for kids, but mothers look at U-pick as an entertainment venue for their children, and I'm not set up to handle it. Many U-picks cater to that clientele with mazes, etc. But if you have other garden crops, children will utterly trample them down. They are also tree climbers, which increases potential accidents, as well as broken branches. People will do all kinds of unexpected things. I know of one guy who didn't provide ladders to his customers due to liability, and one customer searched his barns till he found one. Last summer, one lady brought her dog to my U-pick. I suppose a person should expect that kind of thing dealing w/ the public. Not a problem as long as you don't have other pets. It never bothered me that people eat some of the U-pick. I know it bothers some farmers (I heard of one who weighed customers in and out, and charged for the difference). For me, I figure it's to be expected, and one should figure eating loss in the pricing. Ken, Thanks again for the good advice. I've got my email set up on my new domain (one small hurdle). I've also started looking into the tools I need to get the first page up; FTP software along with software to build the first page. Software's all free of course. I may have a different opinion once I get started, but so far it doesn't look too bad. Maybe I won't need the hot shot after all. Thanks for the encouragement. Mark

You may notice along the bottom of the screen there is a tab labeled "Succession Planting". This is a quick view: You can see each of the crop to the left, and to the right is a bar representing the growing life of that variety. Labels such as DS for "Direct Seed", T for "Transplant", F for "Foliar Feeding", SD for "Side Dress" etc., make it easy to keep track of the schedule for each variety. Further, all of these labels are hyperlinked to my Microsoft OneNote notebook, where each crop has a separate page to track observations, notations, harvesting statistics, information gleened from the web, pages scanned from my favourite gardening books and magazines, etc. For instance, if you click on the "SD" for my Kestrel Beets, it will take you directly to the OneNote page like this: You will notice at the right hand side are tabs for all of the varieties that I grow so that I can enter information about specific crops such as planting date, germination rates, harvest dates and quantities, etc. I can also attach photos, link to my blog posts, etc. Further, each tab has links to favourite recipes (captured from online sources mostly) and notations about taste, quality, etc. Then, to tie it all together, I enter all of that information into a Microsoft Project project, and assign myself as a resource. Each of these items is given a task with a date assigned according to the chart above. Then, I will receive via email a weekly "to-do" list. What I am trying to show is that the information is out there and it can be organized. My setup has been the result of hundreds of hours of research, organizing and cross referencing. This is necessary for me because I have a young family, a very large garden, and I run a family-friends CSA. I need to know when to plant something so that it arrives at a specific time, and I need something to tell me when to do it because when the season arrives, I don't have time to figure it out. Even if I could find software to do this for me, I don't know if I would want it. The research and compilation of this system has allowed me to learn more than I ever could by just punching in some numbers and letting the computer do the work. If they say the best way to garden is to get your hands dirty, the best way to plan your garden is to get your virtual hands dirty.

I'm not a pro, but here's my two cents..........I switched six years ago after twenty years with PC. For me, the change has been wonderful. My down-time dropped to zero instantly and has stayed there. No hardware or software troubles and no bugs from the beginning until now....and I'm up and running 24/7/365. Of course I've had to learn new programs and aps but at least the machine doesn't fight me all the time like my PC's always did. Thing just sits here and runs. In response to the "Macs are expensive" argument so often encountered, I would like to say this: I used to bring in computer-techs twice year, on average, to straighten out my PC stuff. Not having to do that anymore has essentially paid for the machine at this point...and those service-dollars spent don't include the annoyance and aggravation and lost work-time that accompanied the issues. Your hot-button appears to be your particular kind of work...which I am not familiar with. Since it's important to you, I would advise finding an Apple Store and taking some of your stuff on disk or flash-drive with you. All their machines will be there up and running all the time. Let them show you how the iMac would work with your stuff and you can decide based on your actual experience. I do have several professional friends who are compelled to work with programs that only run on Windows. Those folks run Windows on their Macs via parallels and run their proprietary programs that way. However, except for those programs, they leave Windows off and run everything else with the Mac's OS. As far as "learning curve", you'll be amazed at what you can do within hours. In my case, having no previous experience, I was surfing within 45 minutes of the box arriving at the door. I was comfortable within days; confident in a week; proficient in a couple of weeks. And I was absolutely paranoid in the beginning because of all my PC hassles over the years. My advice would be don't worry about the learning curve. I have little doubt things will flow very naturally for you. At this point, I have many family members and friends who have made the switch and they've all said the same thing about that.

Étoile de Portugal its Rose bush created by french botanist Henri Cayeux, then responsible for the Royal Palace Botanic Garden of Lisbon. His meticulous work resulted in five rose bushes: “Belle Portugaise” and “Étoile de Portugal” in 1903; Amateur Lopes, Lusitania and Palmira Feijao in 1905. Unfortunately, with the exception of Belle Portugaise, they all disappeared in Portugal. Could you please tell me if you are aware of any roseries that sell to Étoile du Portugal to bring this plant back to my country? I thank you infinitely. Miguel d’Jorge