My daylilies have lots of bugs on them too. I thought they were aphids too but the color was beige so wasn't sure. I had aphids for sure on my sedums a couple of weeks ago stunting the growth so I put seven dust on them, so far so good. Today I was looking around at my irises and had several about to bloom for the first time by a culvert. Some kind of animal had been digging in the culvert and broke off two of the irises. I'm still crying! I got a lot of new ones last year and didn't expect them to bloom but several of them are and are really pretty. My cannas have been coming up for 2 or 3 weeks now and are growing good. I have some dahlias to plant and have planted a couple already. One of them is up already. I think I lost a few hostas over the winter. Last year I lost a couple too. I have plenty of voles or moles or something and an armadillo. I have some new ones that didn't have time to get very big last year that are going crazy now. I can't believe how quick they're growing! I think I lost my specialty Elephant Ears too except for the dark stemmed one. I really loved the illustris and black magic. I dug them and put them under the house in peat but they were pretty much dried up when I got them out. Nancy

fortunately most of my plants seem to be benefiting from the heat and are getting a lot of growth. My coconut palm is working on its second leaf of the season and my musa basjoos are working on there third leaf in the past 10 days! My tomato plants are the only plants that are really suffering from the heat. However if I didnt soak all these plants at least once a day every day they would be in really bad shape with this heat. Heres my 10 day forecast. Jul 17.......Sunny.......94/76 Jul 18.......Mostly Sunny.......94/77 Jul 19.......Isolated T'storms........90/74 Jul 20.......Partly Cloudy........88/74 Jul 21..... .Isolated T'storms........89/72 Jul 22.......Partly Cloudy........90/74 Jul 23.......Isolated T'storms.......90/71 Jul 24.......Sunny.......87/73 Jul 25.......Sunny.......87/73 Jul 26.......Sunny.......87/71 The end of my forecast is back to average and cooler. Lets face it, unfortunately, we are already about halfway done with those prime summer months of June, July, August, and September. This summer is going by so fast! I miss it already. I hope we have a mild winter so much, but I hate winter so much that I really dont consider any winters a good one. Good luck! -Alex

Dahlia - I use satellite internet (WildBlue - through Dish Network) and it is OK. It was my only option other than dialup. Kids needed a faster connection due to online classes, so I upgraded to the mid level WildBlue package. Be prepared for a large up front fee (I went with WildBlue because it didn't have that large fee and free activation at the time - I am not sure about now) All satellite internet providers have a usage cap. It is called FAP or Fair Access Policy. It limits how much data you can upload or download. Hughes has a daily cap. WildBlue has a rolling 30 day cap. Once you hit your cap, the speed gets throttled back to basically dialup speed or lower. If it is just you and you are not a heavy user - you will never notice. You will NOT be able to stream video (Netflix, etc.) and you will not be able to do a lot of YouTube watching, etc. - but some. It is noticeably better than dialup - but it is 3X the cost for me. You will probably have to commit to a 2 year contract also. Make sure you know up front what you are getting.

My guess is Netflix, hulu and such would not stream good over dial up but someone correct me if that thinking is wrong. I know I couldn't drop my cable like a few of my friends did. I like to watch shows when they are current and even when I use a few netowrks apps on my tablet to watch a show I miss some want me to log in with a provider so if you don't have one you are out of luck if you miss a show. I have time warner internet and TV, don't have a house phone so no need for their phone service. We have one box on the living room TV and that's it. We do have a TV in the bedroom but only get expanded basic on it, no box. I can access time warner live TV and on demand stuff on my laptop at timewarner.com when in bed or I can use the time warner app on my android tablet to watch live TV and on demand stuff up there so you might see if charter has that option of an app but of course you need wireless to do that. This saves me from paying for another box. I do subscribe to hulu and Netflix but don't have a roku for them and just use the apps on my tablet or watch from the computer, works for me as I am a big TV watcher myself and that's what I choose to spend money on. Now to convince the other half I need a 10" tablet for Christmas to watch movies on, he he. Mary