Yes, I agree. It looks Like Psuedosasa japonica. The non-prominant nodes, straight culms, retained culm sheaths, and the look of the leaves, all resemble my Arrow Bamboo. Merry Christmas Kt

One of the woodworkers that was mentioned on another thread uses this Sherwin Williams Lacquer... Thoughts? It comes in dull rub. Here's part of an email he sent to me. (This surface is not for cutting on) "" It is used for restaurant tables, counter tops and islands where the primary use is for service purposes and not for direct cutting. It is available in matt or what sherwin calls dull rub, semi gloss and gloss. 99% of all our blocks using a hard surface finish use the dull rub laquer. The catalyst adds hardness. It is water and stain resistant like waterlox but unlike waterlox it is hard and clear. Waterlox yellows the block. Most people who have hard surface finishes use a cutting matt or block and store it under the top or in a drawer. " Sounds good. I wonder how it wears and also if you can do small repairs by sanding and refinished or if you'd have to do the whole top. I'll call again next week. Maybe I can get a sample piece. I like that it comes in dull rub and supposedly doesn't yellow the block. Here is a link that might be useful: Sher-WOOD Catalyzed Lacquer

boxerpups: I loved playing your boxer version of "Where's Waldo"! A 12 ft tree would be magnificent!!! By any chance, are your red leather chair and sofa by Alexander Taylor? plllog: LOL - I'll explain -"before daylight": what I experience as I walk out to the barn for my daily early morning work on the farm . . . AND . . . snow: the white stuff that sometimes enables me to leave work early or allows me to go in to work late (for my real job away from home) cawfeegirl and kaidan - thank you (did you find the pics kaidan?) jakabedy - your photo is so cool because at first glance it looks like there are actually THREE Christmas trees!!!

Nancy, Gold is better than plain brown. Honestly, anything is better than plain brown. Around Thursday or so I noticed green leaves falling from some trees---they didn't even turn brown first. I think our trees are confused. Why wouldn't they be? Every week they are exposed to lows in the 30s and highs in the 90s. How they even know what season we are in at this point is beyond me. Currently it is 90 degrees at our Mesonet station and 89 at our house. There's reports of haziness and smoke in the air, but none of us are spotting any plumes of smoke, so I think that, as the rumored cold front moves across the state, it may be pushing smoke, fog, haze, smog, dust or whatever ahead of it. There was a 1,700 acre wildfire in the county west of us yesterday and it looked like smoke was hanging over the river this morning, so maybe it is that. Our gold foliage peaked around Thursday or Friday and is going to a dull golden brown today. I believe the hard freeze we had a few days ago has really impacted the tree foliage. Further south in Texas where the freeze didn't happen or at least was not as prolonged as it was here, they have better foliage color than we do right now. At least 3 or 4 of the red oaks in the yeard near our house have some red, and our big red oak near the road, which is my favorite tree, is beginning to show some red. It probably will peak next week though it is hard to tell in this weather. We turned back the clocks at bedtime last night so at least we'd be in sync with the rest of the area when we woke up today. It didn't matter what time the clock was showing---I woke up at the same time I do every single day, even if the clock showed it was an hour earlier. My body clock gets pretty firmly set on a time and doesn't really care what the clock says. It takes me at least a month to adjust to a time change and then before you know it, we're springing forward or falling back all over again. Jennifer, I'm glad you feel a little better today and hope you didn't cough your way through making the announcement at church. Hot and windy, hot and windy, hot and windy. It feels more like earliest September than early November. Chris sent me a text about a half-hour ago---a shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, near San Antonio, TX. Word is several people were shot, including children, before police arrived and took out the shooter. He said he had heard 15 people were down, but I haven't seen any firm number on any media yet, and often early report are erroneous. It just seems to me like the world has gone mad---it is sad when people are not safe in church. And, in a state like Texas with open carry, it is unfortunate someone in that church wasn't armed because perhaps they could have stopped the shooter. It seems wrong to carry a gun to church, but we cannot kid ourselves---these shootings can happen anywhere any more. I'd like to be working in the garden, but all the swarms are still out there---Asian lady bugs, wasps, bees, yellow jackets....so I'm indoors. Oh, and the fire ants and harvester ants all are out and scurrying around. I guess maybe they are busy storing up provisions for winter. Dawn