Sprucehelp The test using a piece of white paper held under a shaken branch is for the detection of spider mites, technically not an insect, but rather, more closely related to spiders. But unlike the carniverous spiders, which are our friends, spider mites are vegetarians that suck the juice out of foliage. This could indeed be what is ailing your spruces. There are many remedies for mites, ranging from quite toxic miticides to relatively benign materials like oils and insecticidal soap. I always reach for the least toxic material when possible. Do note though, that horticultural oils sprayed on blue spruce will dissolve the waxy coating that gives the needles their blue coloration. Insecticidal soap will kill spider mites. But......as Ken has already alluded to, the spraying of thirty foot trees is quite an undertaking. And in order to be effective, very thorough coverage of all needle surfaces will be required. Still, to get the tree(s) past this infestation may well be worth it. Spider mite populations fluctuate quite widely and it may be years before you would need to treat again. This might well be a case of it being worthwhile to hire an arborist to do the spraying. With a bucket truck, they could make fairly short work of it. +oM

Angela, as long as the CENTER is left intact they should keep growing. If you left 2-3 inches, I wouldn't think you'd have stopped the growth. Maybe a better way for you would be to hand pick the outer leaves. That's actually what I do with my lettuce, it was the mesclun bed that I was cutting. I hand pick leaves from my spinach and my lettuce, only taking leaves that are large enough to use. I notice they aren't growing much right now, and the variety of lettuce I planted, Red Sails, never did get to a decent size...next year I'm going back to my old standby, Prizehead. I ran out and took a photo of my mesclun bed, you should be able to see how closely I cut it and how tall the previous cutting has grown. BTW, I did provide filtered shade for this bed when it was hot...I placed a sheet of white plastic lattice over it, which let it sun, shade and water through. It looks pretty rough, because I just cut last night and then I dug a bunch of it up and put it in containers to hopefully transport to AZ! We are expecting temps back up in the low 70s with lows in the 40s again, so I've moved the seedlings outside. The red lettuce plants I'd put inside under the light turned green! No red in them at all. Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

I don't think you are whining either, and the longer you have been in one place, the more attached you can become to it. I used to get very attached to places and then felt homesick or loss when I moved or left, and I had an extremely difficult time when I moved from San Fransico to Austin, even though I had the excitement of going back to university. It took me two years to adjust, and I never got over the culture shock, even though I grew up in Texas. I made quite a few trips back to S.F. to visit, but it was never the same. The one thing constant in my life is my parents' house, but at this point in my life, I would not mind if they moved. I think downsizing is particularly difficult, and even more so if you have strong sentimental attachments. Ann should be a good help to you, since she has moved even more times than I have, I think. I'm sure you can talk with her about your feelings, and I do think it is best to talk it out with someone outside of your family. I do recommend also that you take videos of your gardens before you leave so that you can at least visit them that way after you have left. I love taking pictures of my gardens and looking at them later. You may want to document your house with video for other reasons as well. Lars

lowspark, Just to answer your question as to why people ask you to bring fruit salad. I'm guessing... fruit can be very expensive, a nice fruit salad can cost significantly more than most other brunch items. You can buy like 3 dozens eggs for the price of a small container of blue berries. And fruit genrally can't be bought or made too far in advance. Do they have room to store the fruit? Plus, if the host is working on a lot of other things, it can be a kinda of big last minute time consuming task, that they may ask someone else to do. They can make banana bread days in advance, and even the quiche the night before, but the fruit salad needs to be made that day. That's probably why they give the task to someone else.