Hi Laurelin and All! I read about the BE that frequents the Park Diner near the downtown area in Binghamton. Have you ever tried seeing one there? I fished the Rockbottom Dam as a kid and can easily understand why this area would be such a great place for a BE to forage for fish. Although I have a boat my son and I came across a BE while fishing from a shore area last year. We fished there at least once or twice a week and at first it would fly away and then we realized if we carefully came upon the area it would stay. We could get within less than 150 feet away at times and although their diet is more of the dead fish variety I swear it would sit there thinking, "How in the heck are these guys catching all of those Fish?" One day it flew about 20 to 25' over my head. My son couldn't believe it. I told him it was checking out the tackle I was using :>)

I live in Gulfport, Ms. Until Katrina I loved it here, now I have a few doubts, I lost my brand new home,we had lived in it 8 days,it was hit by a tornado. We are now back in our home and working very hard at making this house into a home. We have been here 28 years, I say I wasn't born in the South but got here as fast as I could. I grew up in Chillicothe,Ohio. Love the forum, also garden junk forum. Nancy

Jess: Before you closed this thread and start a new one, I went through this thread again, specially the posts done in Feb. The size of bushes planted in Jan 16 (ie, just a month or so earlier than when you took the photos) is enormous. Some of them are unbelievably big for a bush that has just been planted just a month earlier. That's absolutely remarkable. What was the size and age of bushes when you planted them? When we buy grafted roses here, they are 5-7 months old grafts and the plants is just tiny with a strong centifolia root stock but mostly one single stem coming out of the graft (they are generally grafted on Rosa centifolia or Bengal Rose which is Rosa chinensis, in Jul / Jun previous year, during monsoon season). Nurseries try to grow them as big as possible by giving them a high doze of nitrogen and phosphorus based fertilizers but afterall, how big can they get in 5-7 months!! Really very impressed to see the size of your bushes and I am not sure it's gypsum and potash alone that has done it. There may be more to it, in addition to gypsum and potash... best regards

A couple that I'd thought of in Alberta and Saskatchewan have been named already ... but Saskatchewan also has a "Climax": one of the students in our theological school came from there. Central Butte, Findlater, Porcupine Plain, Lucky Lake and Duck Lake are in Saskatchewan, also. ole joyful