ole_dawg There are many varieties of hummingbird moths. See the link at the bottom. Some are quite lovely. Their primary characteristic is an ability to hover, dart back and forth, and zoom to and from flowers, etc. That's why people think they're hummingbirds until they look closer. The tomato hornworm becomes a hummingbird moth, and so do lots of other large caterpillars that munch where you don't want them to be. My favorite pest caterpillar is the parsley-worm. It becomes a swallowtail butterfly. But anyway, I'm pretty sure you had a hummingbird moth in your garden. They're quite different from night-moths. Here is a link that might be useful: Hummingbird Moths

Your tree looks likes some kind of Brachychiton also called Flame of the Forest

So called gopher spurge. Supposed to repel gophers (It doesn't) Seeds profusely. The milky white sap must be avoided. Wear gloves when you remove it and don't rub your eyes.

Thx Windchime! I agree with you - I am very proactive about clearing up any problems that I (or we) have run into with this kind of thing. It's weird that we got a call on 2/14, but they just left a generic message---then nothing until yesterday (Fri.) No calls on the weekend either. DH swears he didn't get any magazines (and certainly not $600 worth!), but the lady says that he specifically signed something. This should be interesting -- we have been fighting MCI over what they say are charges we incurred when we switched to their long distance carrier 3 yrs ago (and we switched back to our reg LD carrier after only having MCI 3 wks!) -- every time they've contacted us (I think 2x) I've asked specifically for a detailed bill of the charges and they NEVER end up providing it. This time a collection co. sent the letter and I wrote back and only said that I disputed the validity of the debt because their notice said that if I did that they would have to provide a detailed bill----it's been a month now and they haven't sent anything back to us---which was what happened when MCI was trying to get the same $ from us. DH in fact switched us (the phone was in my name only) after they promised to send a check to cover the cost of switching (we have a co-op phone co.) and a coupon for a bunch of free minutes of long distance -- which they never did. It's only $70 but it's the principal of the thing. I definitely know we didn't make $70 worth of LD calls...as our mothly bill for LD is never over $25. Fun fun fun :-) Jill