Margaret is correct. This is scarey, bad stuff. The possiblities of how you can get this are mind boggleing. I have an unofficial 'fix' here... I will copy ALL the info, and where it was obtained into this post. There's no official patch from Microsoft. There is an unofficial patch, which has been very carefully examined by the SANS team, and they say the patch is safe. They also say it is reversible \-\- that is, you can run the unauthorized patch now to temporarily protect your system, and it won't change anything that can't be changed back later. The SANS people are well\-respected security pros, to the best of my knowledge. This is what they say \-\- and the bold italics are in their original: This is a bad situation that will only get worse. The very best response that our collective wisdom can create is contained in this advice \- unregister shimgvw.dll and use the unofficial patch. You need to trust us. (for the full SANS warning, see http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?rss&storyid=996 ) The most basic form of protection is to run the following command line on any Windows machine, at a command prompt. This should be done as Administrator, on Windows systems which have admin functionality: regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll This command disables thumbnail previews of graphics in Internet Explorer. It can be reversed later, if the hurricane passes by. Turning off thumbnail previews in MS email clients and MS Messenger would also be a good idea, if you use them. Don't click to view graphics from unknown or untrusted sources. For more information, see the SANS site above, and the CERT\-USA warning: http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/181038#solution MS also has their own page on this exploit: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/...ory/912840.mspx This being said, I'm off to move my pix, and I wouldn't look at any here, for awhile either. Makes sense to close down your preview pane in your email, too, just incase. I don't know enough about what's going on to know if I just said the stupidest thing in the world, or not. But lots of folks are worried... My friend who posted the above is comparing this Virus Alert to Hurricane Katrina. It might hit and devestate, or it might just sail on by, leaving little damage in its wake, right now we can't know. Another friend inserted the following info. Turn off your Fax Viewer too, from what I read. I sure hope no one is still allowing HTML in their emails. This thing (and I may have some terminology wrong) can come at you in an email as a microscopic 1x1 pixel transparent graphic, that is you can't even see it. So set your email client to accept text only, turn your spam filters up high and watch the news. This has been compared to going nuclear from standard warfare. Good luck everyone.

Well weeds ARE plants - It's just a question of what you want. Having said that, it looks like something you might not want, but why not wait and see if those little protuberences bloom, then you can decide.

You did post in the Organic gardening forum, so you should expect everyone here to tell you it's horrible. You are talking trees and shrubs - it's unlikely even the minutest amount would make it into them. You may want to consider that bacon and processed meats are also on the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) list of carcinogens and you'd have to drink the straight pesticide, I'm told by a U.C. Davis researcher - at more than a quarter tablespoon to slightly more than 1 gallon of herbicide every day for 2 years to have an exposure that’s equivalent to that of the lab animals in the tests. You'd have been better off not to try to wash it away as most of it is on the foliage of the weeds and you could collect and trash those. It's unlikely that your washing away efforts drove it into the soil much at all (if you had really sandy soil you wouldn't be growing those trees) but it's more unlikely that it will ever cause any problem for you. I'm hanging myself out to dry by saying this in this forum - I tend to follow organic practices except for minimal termite protection at the very base of my wood house in a forested area - but one application when you're talking trees and shrubs is really not a reason to panic. Just skip bacon for awhile if you're concerned about you health :-) .ps I'm not one of those folks live for argument and debate, so this is my opinion and I probably won't come back to this thread, rather a hot topic.

Deannatoby-I'm growing coneflowers for the first time this year so we'll see if they fool me too! Some of the flowers that looked like weeds to me last year (Nicotiana, Nigella) I now know of two main weeds (which I wasn't sure of at first) that try to overtake my giant hill that i'm trying to turn into a wildflower meadow. but there are some others that came up last year but only one or two of them and I waited to see what they were and they got gigantic and my husband convinced me they were weeds so I finally pulled them. I just figured if they were weeds there would be more than one or two of them. There are some others that came up last year but only one or two of them and I waited to see what they were and they got gigantic and my husband convinced me they were weeds so we finally pulled them. I just figured if they were weeds there would be more than one or two of them. Here are my mystery gigantic loner weeds that I still think might be nice flowers :)