As a mental health professional who works with kids, my experience has been that unfortunately even when there are neon signs about a child's potential for gun violence, it can be very challenging to get anything in place to ensure safety. Here are two examples from my own work in the past few years. A high schooler is referred to me after he was found by police to be skipping school, firing rifles in an abandoned house. This boy has had multiple referrals to mental health services since elementary school, due to a history of learning differences, impulsive outbursts, poor social skills, and being bullied. Over the course of working with him, I learn the following: he was named for a famous Nazi commander and his parents have raised him on a diet of "white pride". He attends a majority African-American high school after moving from an almost all-white community in another state (where he was bullied throughout elementary and middle school for social skill deficits and for his looks). He states he is uncomfortable at his school because of all the minorities and has no friends. His house is full of guns and his parents tell me they believe that he will make good decisions about using the guns and refuse to limit his access. They hope that hunting will help him be more manly, says dad. The father is often out of the home for days due to work, and the mother is so afraid of the young man's aggressive meltdowns if she tries to get him to do anything other than play video games that she no longer interferes in his daily activities. Are you worried yet? I sure was. But parents were only concerned about him skipping school because they did not want to go to truancy court. So, nothing was done. I reported everything I could in an attempt to force the parents to continue mental health treatment. They responded by moving to another state. Wash, rinse repeat. Not a shortage of mental health services, but a refusal by parents to utilize them. Second case: A young man was referred to me because he reported to another therapist that his goal was to be a school shooter. This boy had a high IQ and a long history of negative behavior at home and at school. He had no friends or social contacts outside his family and had not since elementary school. Significant mental health history on both parents' sides. This family had lots of financial resources and used them to remove the boy from trouble by changing schools, going/sending him abroad for long stretches of time, and manipulating which school he attended by pretending to live where they did not. He was hospitalized more than once because his parents were afraid to remain in the home with him when he was angry, and due to his victimization of younger brothers. My recommendations for treatment were brushed aside by the parents, and this student had no regular treatment provider during the years he was at our school, just prescriptions from his hospital stays. Parents felt like his diagnoses were not correct but would not take him to the service most likely (in our area) to provide an in-depth evaluation and diagnosis. My belief is that parents did not want in-depth therapy to delve into other issues in the home and this was the rationale for the constant shifting of services. Again, not a shortage of services, not a case where nobody noticed. I liked the Evan video, but I feel so discouraged that even when we do see the young man with the rejecting attitude, problem with bullies, and gun obsession we can't get anyone involved to do anything about it unless parents will take it seriously.

Crab grass is an annual that will begin to germinate when soil temperatures get into the mid 50's so you may be too late this year for a pre emergent control. However a good soil test should not be out of the question and the Texas A & M Cooperative Extension Service provides that at about $14.00 per sample. https://agrilifeextension.tamu.edu/ Digging out the dead plants last fall would have done little to stop any growth this year since the seeds were already on the ground. It does appear that that ;lawn needs some soil improvement, possibly pH, but certainly nutrients since crab grass does grow best if good grass is absent. The people at the local TAMU office may well have some strategies that may help as well.

Beautiful snow scene, Vapor. Wanna trade trees? Love those big, beautiful beech trees, especially the Tri-Color Beech. Green leaves with pink edges! Good to hear your wife is improving, Jim. She must be getting cabin fever. She deserves a day out, doing something she loves, when she's up to it. The weather is so different this year. We have snow coming tomorrow, too, but temps rising the next day so it'll melt. Every time we get snow, it's gone the next day. It's been more like a zone 8 winter. I'm not complaining! Trish, I keep forgetting to let you know I did some research on the feline renal failure sites my vet referred me to, and found that phosphorus binders are not necessary if they're on a therapeutic kidney diet, which she is. The binders are used if the cat won't eat prescription food. Daisy's numbers are good and she eats her prescription food. So far, so good. That will likely change as we progress into this awful disease. I'm glad it was helpful for your puppy. We were discussing this on another thread that's no longer active, that's why I'm bringing it up here. I bought some goat skin garden gloves 4 years ago and can't bring myself to use them. They're so pretty! Very soft. Stay safe in the bad weather, all you Midwesterners, Easterners and Canadians.

Yes, I do know how much you like seeds, and the actual sowing and growing of them, and saving them etc. I am more into the actual plant - as you saw in my post about liking or disliking the act of sowing seeds, I come down more on the disliking side! And while I often think of saving my own seed, it just seems so much easier to buy some later in the year than try to save, dry, and store it properly. I love reading your posts and you should see the image in my mind when I do - your greenhouse (which honestly I have no idea what it looks like, but it's definitely yours in my mind lol - charming, rustic, not at all modern but much more Edwardian) filled with all kinds of little pots of wonderfully-named seeds and seedlings, not necessarily in disarray but not completely neat and organized either - kind of a thing where things are tucked into any niche that's available because you sow so much. But of course you know where everything is. And then you clear it out in spring (probably planting willy-nilly as I do, just to get them in the ground) and then it's on to more seed-starting. It's all a wonderfully romantic image, and despite what you say to bring me back to reality I am going to keep that image in my mind because that's how I like to picture your seed operation lol. I have reduced my veggies to tomatoes and cukes (and I may throw some beans in the ground) but this year my daughter very ambitiously put in a large vegetable garden (or should I say I did it for her lol) and she eats a LOT of salad, as do I. She is also very careful of what she feeds her 2-year-old twins, especially because one of them has some health issues. All that put together with the increasing recalls of greens (and with things looking to get worse thanks to the dismantling of our government and the dwindling oversight of FDA inspectors) I told her I would succession sow the lettuce for her and the girlies. I really don't mind it at all, but as anyone here who has heard me complain, I never seem to have any time and even if I do, I am a terrible procrastinator. But being off from work today and heading outside, I think those lettuce trays will be the first thing I do! Oh, also wanted to add - my annuals are holdovers from the days I sold bouquets at a few farmers markets. I just can't NOT have bouquets in my house, at my workplace, etc. So I MUST sow some flowers for cutting. I DO have a lot of reseeders, which isn't quite the same as biennials but they are self-sown and return every year, so they are similar in that respect - nigella, larkspur, Queen Anne's lace, rudbeckias, agastache, several different feverfews - although I was horrified to learn that bees don't like feverfew so I am rethinking letting those stay... :) Dee