Ruth: Theresa & I are going to talk via phone tomorrow to hash out details. If you have any suggestions for how to set it up, please email either of us before then. I am going to ask the nurseries & shops I list in the brochure to donate a doorprize, so we'll have some pretty nice doorprizes, I hope! EVERYONE is welcome to offer suggestions, so please just email either of us or post here.

Hurrah! I can't wait to meet all of you! Sandsquid, I 'll happily dig in the trenches for a taste of your blueberry wine. A friend of mine works for Wild oats/Whole foods and had to go to Florida. She brought back a lovely blueberry wine that alas, can't be found near abouts. I will be making a 13x9 casserole, not really sure of what. Also a fruit salad. Plants I will be bringing: Rudbeckia sedum purple iris rhizomes wild columbine couple of fans of Autumn Red daylily same for an unnamed yellow daylily. This one is fragrant! For those of you who don't have plants...good for me! You can have all of mine!

Everybody's right, of course. which means that it's all the more imporant to make & maintain, as pk says, "that little oasis in the concrete, a way station for the hungry and tired". When the wildlife has been reduced to a small percentage of the numbers that once flourished, it's likely that the habitat & food supply have been demolished. That last pair of cardinals needs you to plant big thorny roses & to fill the bird feeder. A little bit off the subject, or maybe not, is the idea of mentoring, of "spreading the gospel" of gardening to help rather than dominate nature. Those of us who grew up when the world was a greener & less crowded place-when you could ride a horse to a friend's house, when cut grass smelled like grass, & when zillions of butterflies took flight with our every step through a pasture-have a lot to pass on to a new generation. Sharing knowledge & skills as well as plants is a powerful way to increase our effectiveness as conservators of our beautiful world. If we can show a friend the value of plants in the food chain, & that friend digs up the grass & plants for our birds & butterflies & pollinators, if we can show our neighbor that poisons are bad & plants & bugs are good for her toddler, & that neighbor throws out her herbicides & plants vegetables & berries, if we can show our brothers & sisters that lawns are high maintenance brats with expensive chemical dependencies & they till up a section & put in an herb garden, that's a step. don't know if it's a big or a little step, but it's a step. & every step counts a great deal when so much is being damaged & so much is being destroyed.

Juanita, look at my other post titled Desoto Falls. Paticularly in the bottom left quarter of the actual waterfall, you can see several dust specks... From what I understand, dust is just a miserable fact of life...lol. I think it happens most requently when changing lenses. I try to change mine with the camera facing down....dont know really if it helps, but in my mind it does! :)