Very sweet and so nice to hear. Thanks for letting the cat out of the bag, Jean, and I hope you continue to do well, too.

Dduffy, You're welcome. The rain has been a blessing and it came just in time--I don't know how much longer the firefighters could handle fighting fire all day and half the night and not sleeping. I do want to emphasize that even firescaping doesn't guarantee you'll escape fire damage, but it helps. In this week's 40-60 mph wind gusts, it probably didn't matter what you did in an urban area since the wind carried fire from roof to roof. I'd like to say this past week's horrific wild fires were a "once in a lifetime" thing, and we'll likely never see such a thing again, but the truth is that we have several days here in OK every year, esp. in the drier parts of the state like western Oklahoma, that conditions are right for just such a disastrous fire event. That's why I always try to mention Fire Weather Watches and Red Flag Fire Warnings here--because such fire events can and do happen and we are often at risk from them. When the Loco-Velma and Raliff City-Tatums area had similarly horrific fires in 2005-2006, all of us down here in southern OK more or less thought it wouldn't happen again here, and yet, it just did. Although this past week's fires hit many areas of the state, it seems especially cruel that the fires hit some areas that were burned in similar incidents just a couple of years ago. It seems that, in this tornado-prone state, we are increasingly subjected to "fire storms" too. The weather here is incredibly diverse, and not in a good way. Dawn

FOAS, that's a good tip, I still over fill my waffle maker sometimes. Bobby, it's all a matter of practice, soon you'll know how full and how long to cook them. I like whole grain waffles, but the kids like the fluffy white ones so that's what I mostly make. You have a recipe you like, so I say keep using that and keep practicing. As I mentioned, I still over fill mine sometimes, if I get distracted and don't pay close enough attention, and then I get that mess to clean up. Maybe less of a mess, thanks to FOAS... Annie

Arizona is a big source of steer manure. This is collected in feed lots where the animals are fed a high grain finishing diet that tends to cause the formation of urinary calculi, which can clog urethras (urethrae?), especially in steers which get a huge physical insult to their urination system when they are gelded. Google "waterbelly". To reduce this really nasty potential problem, the animals have large amounts of salt added to their feed, simply to encourage drinking and the resultant necessary frequent urination. Huge amounts. The steers also get free access to salt blocks because if they didn't they'd lap up urine (for the salt content) as they're salt-lovin' fools! The result is that bags of steer manure, "composted" or not, with added non-steer compost or not, has a LOT of sodium chloride salt. This is not too much of a problem unless you put a lot on your garden. Then it could screw things up. Just to be fair, steer/cow/goat/chicken/rabbit/alpaca manures are indeed "biosolids". They just don't carry the same level of "EWWW Factor" that growing your carrots in a city's highly processed syphilitic diarrhea has. You gotta draw the line somewhere on what you're willing to take literally shoved down your throats by those corporate ^$$holes who don't give one single damn about you or yours. That may sound bitter.