The picture of your dwarf coconut tree looks nice there. It has healthy looking fronds. I wonder if it's just a dwarf, or is it really sick? So, were you able to get fruit out of it all the 10 years you've had it? Thanks for the link to the Indonesian website. They do have a lot of healthy looking coconut bonsai. I'm still trying to find out if they actually will produce fruit eventually. I've looked at some bonsai fruit trees on the you tube and they seem to be able to flower and produce some fruit. It would make a lot of sense for people like us to consider having bonsai trees if we cannot be sure that we can keep these tropical plants alive in the ground. You sure are a lot closer to the equator than where I am. You're over 800 miles and I'm around 2,500 miles off the equator. It's nice that you have the warm enough temperature to keep these beautiful trees there. So, do you have to manually irrigate your your landscape, or do you have an auto irrigation? It would be a lot of land to irrigate as you seem to have a huge place there. So, what do you do when your trees produce all the fruit there .. lol? Do you eat them? Do you know that coconut is known as the miracle fruit? There have been many articles and books written on it. A few years back, I started changing my cooking oil to coconut oil and include coconut milk and flour into my diet. It has brought tremendous improvement to my health situation. I've heard that coconut water is also a super nutrient drink, but I have to read more about it to find out if it contains a high sugar content which I'm trying to avoid. There's even someone on the internet selling fresh coconut water online.

We sold coconut oil from NOW foods while I was still married to the ex. He still carries it, it's $5.99 for a 12 oz. bottle. It's more expensive than butter, and certainly more expensive than shortening, but not more expensive than walnut oil or hazelnut oil or even good olive oil and it's much healthier for your heart, IMO, than butter. They all have about the same amount of fat and calories, but all fats are not created equally in a nutritional sense. Ashley likes apples sauteed in a bit of coconut oil in lieu of butter, and says they don't need as much sugar either, because the coconut oil adds some flavor of its own. I use it in some baked goods, but find that things like shortbread are somewhat the worse in taste and texture for the substitution. Of course, I make shortbread about twice a year, so it's an occasional splurge anyway. It's all a matter of what you like, and I find that I have to experiment and try things to determine whether its a good sub for certain other fats. I can also say that I'm in my 50s and have extremely low blood pressure, my glucose levels are excellent and the only reason I have high cholesterol is my genetics, it's an inherited trait from my mother's side and has nothing to do with my diet. I eat sugar when I like (Michigan beet sugar, grown and made locally), butter in moderation, use regular old flour off the shelf. However, I grow my own organic garden, my own grass fed beef, my own free range chickens and eggs and then I can and preserve those things myself. I try to avoid the hydrogenated fats and remember what my old doc told me: "If it wasn't a food 50 years ago, it's not a food today". Of course, he also told me that if you're over 40 and you get up in the morning and nothing hurts, you've died in your sleep. In spite of that, I have no discernable aches and pains and can still do a cartwheel on Makayla's lawn, spend 10 hours digging post holes without giving out and outrun the grandkids, so I must be doing SOMETHING right. Annie

Hello all. I happened upon these posts as I too, was looking for some answers related to why my lab's back legs are still so wobbly. Phoenix is my 12 1/2 yo yellow lab who had tested positive for the Lyme's titer a couple of years ago but didn't show any symptoms. However, a little over a month ago, she got into a fight with our other dog and she was bit just below her ear. Evidently it abscessed (and I didn't know it) and then one day she was cowering, trembling and lame. I rushed her to the pet ER thinking she'd slipped on the ice but when they did blood work it showed she was in kidney failure. The next step was the Lyme's test and it showed very high counts. The vets think that with her body fighting the abscess infection, it might have been just too much for her body (and the Lyme's symptoms appeared) Cutting to the chase, I promptly put her on a home-made kidney diet (potatoes and cut up chicken), have been giving her supplements of "greens" (dehydrated form...in the capsules), liquid vitamin B, probiotics, a fish oil capsule, and Coenzyme 10. Also, I am giving her a product called "epikitin" (sp?): this is a phosphate blocker. Of course, this was in addition to the doxycyline. The greens, vitamin B, fish oil was just a general immune support for her body The probiotics are to help reestablish the good flora killed off by the antibiotics The coenzyme 10 is considered by some to help support the blood kidney values (blood work by vet) The epikitin is a phosphate blocker (to support kidneys; you can get this from your vet) Today, Phoenix has finished her 4 week bout of doxycline and I have purchased a tincture of goldenseal and echinacea (antimicrobial/antiviral herbs) to help pick up where the doxycline has left off. I will probably continue this for another couple of weeks. I am also working on getting her into a local holistic vet. She is doing much better, but she tires very easily and still has considerable lameness in her back legs. I suspect her hiking days with me are over, but I am just glad she is still with us.... I am not a vet, but wanted to offer my experience in hopes that it might help someone's pet. I did a lot of research online and talked a lot to my vet....I'd recommend anyone else facing the Lyme's issue to do the same. I am terribly, terribly, terribly sorry to hear all the folks in the thread above who lost their pet. Believe me, I was staring that in the face the entire first two weeks of this dilemma -- my heart goes out to all of you. Peace. Maria

That's a beautiful specimen! I've had my mango tree less than two years and had never even seen one before I got it, since they don't grow in my area without a whole lot of work (temp-regulated auto-on/off old Christmas lights, multiple layer frost covers at night) so I'm new to this. But in my experience so far, the upper leaves are the most susceptible to cold damage and that's what that one brown spot looks very much like. Conversely, a Christmas light bulb directly touching it could scorch it, too, but that seems far less likely in your case.