cfox248 I understand the frustrations involved in growing citrus trees. They are down right hard to grow but can be very rewarding. All of mine are doing very well. I did want to show you that other subtropical ( Hardy chicago fig ) fruits can be grown easily up north. My string of pictures show how productive they are. I was not trying to tell you to give up on citrus, I am not going to either. I hope others may be encouraged to go figs as well as citrus. After all, if you are not convinced in the citrus forum to try figs, you'll never go to the fig forum to be encouraged. The reason that citrus is so hard to grow is that it does not go dormant in winter. That is when all predator insects are gone and the light is so low the trees get sick. Figs shut down and hibernate. Go ahead and try one from ediblelandscaping.com as linked above. They go on sale for as little as $6.00 often. They grow fast, so get a small one. The tree above is 19 months old from a 2 inch cutting. JoppaRich I have given a lot of on topic advice over the years. I give 'out of the box' ideas through pictures on what I have done followed by instructions ( verbal and visual ) of technique that are low cost to free. I will continue sharing my ideas even though they wont apply to the majority. I would suggest that you look through my stuff and form ideas from it to what works for you. A pictures worth a thousand words. A video is worth a billion words click bellow for citrus growing tips and tricks Steve Here is a link that might be useful: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/citrus/msg0320572518736.html This post was edited by poncirusguy on Thu, Nov 6, 14 at 7:38

Wednesday was the second candle. I screwed up and read the wrong calendar and invited my small family for Wednesday but we had a great time. My grandson's first latkes and he was so happy to have them, like several of his friends. And he measured the baking powder and pepper and mixed the Simply Potatoes with the flour and cracked the eggs. Me and dil fried. She's wonderful. Delicious. Easy menu, kind of around the world. We had greek seasoned lamb kebobs, sour cream/cucumbers, tomatoes, meat loaf, apple sauce, home baked challah and artisan bread, fresh pineapple(we said Hawaii), Plate of lettuces, used for wraps. I forgot a lot of stuff. Except for the meat it was kind of milchicky(dairy). That's like, except for that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?) I have done better in earler years, gelt, dreidle, and songs and lots more preparation, but this was what I did this year and we had fun. DD graced our presence for periods of time(between shopping forays) aint no shopping in Missoula. Are there any latkes left??? We saved you some lovely lotkes. She was not too thrilled wit

Well, DH picked up SS last night and had a long talk with him on the way home. Apparently it was all about wanting presents. BM dragged SS around to various relatives who, caught off guard, coughed up some cash in lieu of gifts (this is typical after his birthdays and such). BM asked SS if it was his choice or DH's that he not come up for Christmas, and SS said that it was his, that he'd always spent Christmas at home and he didn't want to not do so this year. After she told him that he had spent Christmas with her before (he has not, how can anyone not remember if they've ever spent Christmas with their own child or not?!) she asked him why he'd come up for New Year's then? At which time SS informed her that he wanted to see if anyone got him anything!!!! DH made SS call BM to apologize for that comment. DH said that as much as it pained him to do so, due to some of the horrific things BM has said/done to SS over the years, SS was clearly wrong on this one (his honesty not withstanding). DH also explained to SS that it was OK to want to see his mother, or if he's truly afraid of his mother then that situation is what it is - but it is absolutely NOT OK to say that he's afraid to go - unless he might get a present. We can understand and sympathize with the mixed feelings about BM. SS is constantly hoping that things will change and she'll "get better". That had been and I'm sure will be a problem; he'd get his hopes up and usually they were dashed. But this whole thing was not good at all. After DH and I beating ourselves up for a while wondering what we've done wrong, it finally dawned on us that SS has always been very generous and giving before and it's only been recently that we've seen any signs of, well, where he's behaving exactly like BM and SS18. We've no doubt at all he's been exposed to comments about what they can get out of people as it's brought up in almost any conversation with either of them. (As an aside, we found out BM is on welfare and is quite probably committing welfare fraud. Explains the whole "free lunch" thing....) Anyway. This new and un-charming mentality is going to be cut off hard. Our volunteering is going to change to become more focused; I'm looking at volunteering opportunities involving children with health/physical/mental/emotional needs. As DH and I said last night, nothing puts things into perspective like helping a child who doesn't care what, if anything, they get for Christmas but are just hoping to not spend Christmas in the hospital again, or to be able to build a snowman one last time. As for the whole modification in process, DH is pushing onwards at this time. His reasoning is that they might as well get all of this one-time mandatory stuff out of the way now; at any point in the process if any agreement is reached they can stop it. DH will be speaking to SS's counselor to see if her opinion is changed at all by this latest. Unfortunately it is now obvious that SS does not have the emotional maturity (understandable, he's only a kid) to necessarily have any significant input at this time. Even though we can win a bidding war for SS's attention, LOL, that is absolutely not not NOT going to be allowed to begin; not fair to us, not fair to crazy BM, not fair to SS - and then I'll end up with an adult SS like some of you have with an insane sense of entitlement ("Mattie, do you really need to spend that much money on your parents' funeral? Can't you just throw the body into a dumpster somewhere? Because, ya know, that much money would buy me a nice vacation and I'm feeling really stressed right now from all the pressure of keeping my 1.2 QPA in my fourteenth year as an undergrad....") LOL!

You didn't look hard enough. Look at the antlers, the cap with the shamrock, and there are the rabbit ears and Santa's feet are rabbit feet :o)