I looked in the Monterey Yellow Pages, and see that there is a Ewing Irrigation Supply outlet in Monterey, and they would have a better selection of Drip Irrigation supplies than Home Depot does. Just be aware that the component drip tubing and connectors that correspond to 1/2" size tubing are not the same between Irrigation Supply companies and Home Depot/Orchard Supply Hardware drip tubing. The 1/4" tubing is interchangeable, but the larger sizes are not. Another problem I often have with shopping for drip irrigation at places like Home Depot, is that they are not fully stocked, and often missing exactly what you might need. Ewing will also have information pamphlets on designing and installing drip irrigation, but is not match for companies like The Urban Farmer, which will actually design a system at no cost if you buy all your materials from them. There may also be similar Irrigation Supply companies in your area that offer the similar service. Last comments, I would recommend you not install the 1/4" laser tubing which acts as a soaker hose, as the 1/4" tubing with in-line emitters at either 6 or 12" spacing is much more reliable, and makes less noise when operating. Also, you should be aware that drip emitters should be moved as plants grow larger, or have emitters added further away from plants to encourage wider/deeper rooting. Too often, no further work is done to systems after initial installation, and you may provoke root rot on some plants because all the water is concentrated right at the base of the plant, rather than further out as they grow larger.

Michie1, There's a lot of information at Yahoo, then click on the "Finance" option. If you enter the symbol (see them listed beside the name of the stock in a good financial paper, e.g. N.Y. Times), it will show you what the current price is, during the day (with 15 - 20 min. delay). If you click on the symbol, it will show you recent information about that stock, plus chart of stock price ranges, over a day, a few days, a month or so, a year, 5 years, etc. In most libraries you can look up information about a whole host of stocks. Very few mutual funds have a long-term track record of much higher than stock market averages. Which are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 7 - 8% annual growth. U.S. mutual fund managers often charge about 1.5% management fee - which is a fairly hefty percentage of your growth for the year. Many Canadian mutual fund managers charge over 2% annual management fee, which is about a quarter of the usual rate of growth. However, if the value of the stocks in their portfolio drops - they still get their fee. There are some stocks that carry a number of stocks as part of their business, so they operate somewhat like a mutual fund. One such could have been bought for $12. in 1965 and recent price was quite a few thousand, as they've never split. Some say that they've not paid out any of their earnings, either - which would have meant that you'd have incurred no tax liability since '65, had you bought shares then and continue to hold them. But the guys who claim that are wrong - they paid out 10 cents in 1967, so shareholders would have had some tax liability that year. I understand that they own more Coke shares than any other agency, plus a lot of Gillette, insurance, candy, etc. Their annual report is written in language that most of us can understand. I'm not suggesting that you should buy any of that company. I own some shares - of the recently issued kind, which are valued at one-thirtieth of the original shares. Good wishes for learning how to make wise investment decisions. ole joyful

No, dividends are not tax-free in Canada. A Canadian investor owning Canadian stocks has a method of calculation that gives a substantial dividdend tax credit, increased substantially last year, meaning that s/he pays a low rate of tax on such dividends - but does not escape tax entirely. With one exception. If s/he is single and has *no other income*, regular tax credits added to the dividend tax credit team up to mean that s/he can earn about $49,000. annually before becoming tax-liable. Except ... in our province, the "taxpayer" would have to pay Ontario Health Levy of about $600. at that level of income. With a low-income spouse, charitable or political contributions, (and/or high rate of eligible medical costs, rather unusual in Canada, as we do not pay fees directly for most medical services), the tax-free level goes higher, due to additional credits. If s/he has other income, the rate of tax on Canadian dividends is lower - but s/he doesn't escape tax entirely. Which is why I much prefer to earn Canadian dividends over earning interest, which is taxed at top rate. The investment method that the guy whose 10-year record, back-checked for 20 years, I've followed uses a Canadian equivalent of the "Dogs of the Dow" system. Based originally on the Dow-Jones Industrial average, they picked the 10 stocks paying the highest rate of dividend with cheapest price and bought a position in each. Or, in the Canadian system, bought a position in each of the cheapest 5. A third system was to drop the cheapest priced one, as one possibly in trouble, maybe having suffered recent slide in stock price but dividend rate having been maintained till now, but possibly about to be cut. Then to buy a double-sized position in the second cheapest. That last, though more volatile, over a long term sometimes turned in the best rate of total return (if you don't mind riding roller-coasters). The investor re-balanced once per year, and it took about an hour or two to do the calculations. Leave everything alone through the rest of the year. In the Canadian system, usually about 70% of the holdings carried forward from one year to the next, so one had low levels of commissions to buy and sell. His system out-performed over 90% of mutual funds' managers records, and the market averages. Plus, very few mutual fund managers succeed in outperforming market averages over a number of years ... so in a number of cases it makes sense to buy Exchange Traded Funds, and pay under 1% fees. Actually, a substantial portion of the holdings of a number of fund managers is ETFs. In Canada, we pay higher rates of management expense to mutual fund managers than you do, especially the equity-based ones, which I prefer, so I haven't bought a mutual fund in the last 15 years. Learn to be my own manager, and stick the mutual fund manager's fee in my pocket. Something to be considered is that in a heavy correction, stocks paying dividends tend to slide less that the average. And a few stocks have had a record of growth in amount of dividend paid every year for the past 40 (I think J & J) and some others for almost that long. Now that the market is so much broader than in earlier years, it might be well to consider a wider-ranging system to use as base for one's evaluation than the Dow-Jones 30 Industials. But stay with large, quality companies. Learn how money works - an interesting hobby ... that pays well!! Very few objective, unbiased advisors around. ole joyful

If you have the ones minted before about 1994, they're almost pure bronze (mostly copper) and worth more than a penny in today's market ... but the ones minted after that are steel with a thin coating of bronze ... so not worth much. On a nation-wide phone-in on Sunday afternoon on our national radio, someone on the prairies said that he'd been making money on his for years: when he needed a washer for small bolt, he just drilled a hole in a penny, as a real washer cost 3 cents! Actually ... I think that it was illegal to interfere like that with government property (and end up stealing it). Currency is only available to us on loan: it ain't ours! If the total of purchases, plus tax, comes to anything at or under e.g. $1.02, it's rounded down to $1.00. At $1.03 and above, it's usually to be rounded up to $1.05. One smart-ass went on a website where they were discussing it to suggest that one deposit $0.03 into one's bank account - that they'd have to round it up to $0.05, so he'd gain 40% ... and I objected, saying that a 2 cent return on a base of 3 cents ... was an increase of 66% ... and that after not having to wait for a year. But... sorry - dealing with the electronic side of things, the rounding-up and rounding-down aren't operational, as the exact amounts can be shown: it's only the physical situation where it applies. So - some are saying that there'll be an increased use of credit (read "debt") cards when making purchases. ole joyful