Not that pissy, and I am a big Geraldo fan, but I give no one carte blanche when challenging my big apple ego. I am not a commercial apple grower and have a great deal of respect for anyone who has gone that route. My business is making sure home growers get great fruit and if they don't, I'm out of business. Commercial growers can be out of business even if they're succesful fruit growers. I have read articles about using Crockers fish oil to blossum thin apples organicly in the west. The information I get is that blossum thinning isn't so useful out east because of more unpredictable fruit set. As I understand it, when we get cool wet weather during and immediately following petal fall it can have a strong negative affect on fruit set. Of course cool weather also affects the efficacy of chemical thinning- but the other way, by reducing thinning. As far as my suggestion of removing all blossums from branches when all else fails to create annual fruiting, it is based on personal experience with a Goldrush apple tree on my own property. Even after removing all flowers on every other spur and coming back shortly after petal fall to hand thin thoroughly I couldn't break biennial bearing on this tree. It was as if the tree just sent out a signal that could only be stopped by going radical. I did and of course it worked. Goldrush is considered an annual bearer and further south it behaves much differently than here in NY. Even here, the reason my tree gives me so much trouble is that it looses the sun from mid-afternoon on but even in full exposure Goldrush can be difficult here. When reading Beach's Apples of NY it is interesting how many of the heirloom varieties were noted not only for being biennial, but even triennial, so obviously thinning on such a variety as this wouldn't work consistantly. Most newer varieties are fairly reliable annual bearers or they wouldn't be released. One clear exception for me, even when grown in optimum conditions, is the Fortune apple which has actually been triennial on a couple of sites- one with full sun exposure. I'm hoping the trees will settle down when they mature. In the humid part of the country the growing season doesn't give fruit trees as much total energy to work with. It's like a solar battery loosing power on cloudy days.

If you have these in digital form, I suggest that you print the most treasured ones on good photo paper to serve as a backup. Store these flat with a non-stick archival quality separators between each photo, better yet, slip each photo into an archival quality sheet protector. Sheet protector can be found at office supply stores. Lowest cost per protector is to buy by the box-full. Include with each photo place, date taken, and names of people. If the photo was taken at an event, name that event for example, Thanksgiving day at Bill Jone's house. If something out of the ordinary happened, also record it, for example, Billy chipped a tooth while sledding on the hill behind the house. These little notes tells a family history that would otherwise be forgotten in the future. Mow, about digital storage. The problem here is to pick something that can be read 10 to 20 years or more later. PCs and personal recording media has changed rapidly over the past 20 years with the result that older media can not be read because the technology was abandoned as new and better things came along; think 5.25" floppies, 3.5" floppies, superdisk, various tapes, and recently, CDs. Today, of this list, the average PC can read only the CD and believe it or not, the CD is going away, too. I keep one computer equipped to read 3.5" floppies for retrieval purposes. In a pinch, I can still read and write 5.25 floppies (That's caveman era for a computer.) I have been storing photos on CDs, but last winter I took a genealogy course and the instructor convinced me that CDs may go away within 10 years if not sooner. She advised the class to store records on DVDs as these will still be around after the stores stop selling CDs. A DVD holds so much more data than a CD and that spells the end to the CD. I brought up my concern that I thought that a CD was a more secure recording media than a DVD owing to its larger 'spot' size; DVDs spot size is extremely small and more easily damaged or corrupted. The instructor said maybe so, but the DVD has been developed enough to take over and it will. CDs are going away. She urged the class to copy their genelogical data and photos to DVDs She also recommended to use archival quality DVDs. These cost more but have a better backing material. One has to seach to find these because most stores stock only the average disc, but if you treasure your data, you'll use archival quality media for long term storage. You can store mountains of data on external hard drives and at a very resonable cost. These should be drives that are not used on a daily basis, only for data storage and retrieval. Again, if you depend on these, keep aware of changing technology in the interface between the drive and computer. If you buy an external drive today, i'll most likely have a USB port. Just think, a little over 10 years ago, there were no USB. The ports could change again in the next 20 years and you'll need to shift your data to another media. One caveat: A DVD may better survive the shock of a drop than a hard drive. Some may be tempted to use "Thumb Drives" for permanent storage. These have solid state memories, no moving parts, and are very compact. This is very tempting, but I do not recommended it. There are technical reasons. The storage junctions are good for about 10,000 read/write cycles before failue. Manufacturers have develped schemes to use all the junctions by moving partitions in memory so that eventually, every junction gets used. This spreads the useage over the entire drive. This process is transparent to the user. This feature made possible commercialization of the product and for the average home user, he's unlikely to run into the wear-out problem. However, a gamer might. The second feature is that the memory is volatile; It requires a voltage source to keep the memory "alive". Fortunately, the current drain is extremely small for this task and can be provided by a small, long life battery, Typically a lithium battery. This is the thumb drive's achilles heel. Eventually, that batteriy will fade and the drive will be scrap. About 10 years is expected. Again, this technology is a moving target and some day, we might see thumb-drives with non-volatile memory. But for now, I recommend thumb-drives only for temporary storage. I would not depend on one to hold data for 15 years. Some folks may give up on managing data storage and opt for the cloud. Wonderful, but how sure are you that the business model for cloud computing will survive? (The instructor I mentioned is well grounded in this technology. She teaches classes to certify IT people for MicroSoft Windows Support and maintence.) Fifty years from now when we are dead and gone and our media trashed, think about a future family genealogist discovering that backup box of photos and the notes that go with them. She/he will be joyful and will suddently become an expert family historian. It is advised that you print all photos, notes, and text on acid free paper with fade resistant ink. You can't beat hard copy for endurance. Geez, I've almost convinced my self to start scrap booking my genealogy family data. I could include historical happenings such as presidental elections, war beginings and endings, photos of schools and other public buildings that are scheduled for tear down, etc.

Ii am going to post here so it wont add on to the new one with bingo and Preakness. I got my prettiest garden box from Margo. A wonderful hearty plant of Lavender Provence. a great addition to my garden. Then 2 darling solar butterflies. a bright pair of gardening gloves for those trimming jobs. I love this sweet package.

Well some would say my back ups are over kill for phone and computer. I figure the less I keep on the device cluttering it up the smoother it will run. I have seen to many people crying over lost family photos because they didn't back them up. I hope they can figure out what is causing this. I had the boot loop issue with the G4 and LG admitted it was their update that fried the phones. Happened once in warranty and once out of warranty and out of warranty LG still gave me a prepaid mailer and fixed it free once they determined it was not my fault. I have to say their customer service was very good to deal with on that issue. I didn't realize how updates worked with tracphone and the lesser carriers so good to know.