OK; Buddy---you see how much you've been missed---don't be coy. When I pick up beer bottles along the roadside while walking my daughter's dog, I've often thought of you. When Bicycle Charlie comes and hangs out down by the river for the day, with his knapsack stuffed with food and beer, camoflauge jacket and wide brimmed, beat-up hat, I've wondered how you're doing. I see him leave in the afternoon and wonder about you again. Solitary life, but happy enough and content with himself. Your individual paths find their own routes when I remember the galaxies of separation in your thought processes and your particular ability to take any given day and turn it into an excerpt from a battered novel, which when opened, allows weathered pages of life-lived-on-the-edge to fall where they may. One has the choice to pick up a page or two and read them, or to leave them as they lay and continue on their way. I have to chase them as they're blown about and catch what I can. So much of this world is worded pablum, contrived situations passing for reality, cocooned lives rolling over those who have nothing between hurt and their vunerable skin. You remind the reader life is to be lived and endured, to be celebrated and once again, endured. And you never, ever sugar-coat it. That is why I remember you. That is why I will never, ever forget you. You remind me of Richard Abbey---he got out before you did---not that he wanted to. I'll never forget him, either.

REMEMBER WHEN THIS WAS THEIR ANSWER TO THE LOW LAKE?????? LAKE OKEECHOBEE BACKPUMPING FACT SHEET Lake Okeechobee has a surface area of 730 square miles and is the second largest freshwater lake wholly within the United States.  The Lake has been classified by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection as a Class I Drinking Water source, which requires strict standards allowing only small amounts of pollution.  The Lake is the sole source of drinking water for several small towns on the south rim of the Lake and one of the sources of drinking water for West Palm Beach, Fort Myers, and the entire Lower East Coast metropolitan area.  The region south of the Lake, known as the Everglades Agricultural Area ("EAA"), contains over a half million acres of former Everglades that have been diked and drained to make them suitable for urban and agricultural development. Most of the land is in sugar cane cultivation.  Three companies own 87% of the land within the EAA. One of those companies is the United States Sugar Corporation which owns 104,000 acres in the EAA, much of it in the area directly south of Lake Okeechobee.  Polluted water is pumped off the sugar cane fields and collected in large District-owned canals.  At the north ends of these canals, the District owns and operates three pumping stations, S-2, S-3, and S-4, which are built into the Herbert Hoover Dike that surrounds Lake Okeechobee.  Each of these pumping stations has either three or four very large pumps each powered by a diesel engine about four times the size of a semi trailer engine. When all the pumps in a pump station are operating, the discharge is equivalent to the flow of a medium size Florida river.  The flow from the pumps creates a highly visible "plume" of dark (sometimes even black) colored water that can reach nine miles out into Lake Okeechobee.  The plume contains high levels of nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen) and high levels of dissolved organic materials that come from agricultural and urban wastes.  One of the largest pump stations is within 2 and ½ miles of the drinking water intake of South Bay, one of the small towns on the south rim of the Lake that uses the Lake for drinking water.  Earthjustice brought this lawsuit against the South Florida Water Management District in 2002 on behalf of the Florida Wildlife Federation.  The case is a Clean Water Act "citizen suit" which sought a declaration from the court that the District had to obtain federal Clean Water Act "point source" permits for its pump station discharges.  As "point sources," the discharges from the pumping station must meet pollution limits applicable to Lake Okeechobee.  The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians entered the lawsuit in support of the environmental groups.  The United States Sugar Corporation entered the case in support of the District.  The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers entered the case on the side of the polluters - the District and U.S. Sugar - in early 2005. This was the first occasion in the 33 year history of the EPA that it entered a water pollution case on the side of a polluter.  No EPA witness testified at the trial and no EPA witnesses were provided for depositions.  Florida Wildlife Federation argued that when the District collects and then moves water in a way that harms the receiving water body (here Lake Okeechobee) it is responsible for cleaning up the pollution in the same way a city is responsible for cleaning up sewage it collects in its sewage system before it discharges its wastewater.  On average, the S-2, S-3, and S-4 pumping stations discharge 32 billion gallons of water into Lake Okeechobee each year.  Today, on average, the pumps contribute the equivalent of 60,000 one hundred pound bags of phosphorus to the Lake each year.  Because of this excessive fertilization, the Lake now chronically suffers from toxic blue-green algae blooms, including one in 2005 that generated toxin levels in Lake Okeechobee 65 times greater than the World Health OrganizationÂs safe drinking water guidelines.  Blue-green algae toxins can affect the liver, nervous system and skin and have been linked to increases in liver cancer, chronic fatigue illness, skin rashes, abdominal cramps, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, as well as deaths of dogs and cattle. The toxins are not removed by chlorination or boiling and algaecides (which kill the algae) result in the release of the toxins into the environment.  Phosphorus pollution levels in the Lake have risen continuously from about 40 parts per billion in 1960 to 240 parts per billion last year  an all time high. Phosphorus is a main ingredient in fertilizer and is an important component of animal waste and sewage.  The state and EPA have recently determined that the maximum allowable level of phosphorus pollution is 40 parts per billion.  In 1976, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection contended that backpumping into Lake Okeechobee from the pumping stations should be stopped. At trial, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection reversed position and sided with the District in contending that no Clean Water Act permit was necessary.  After the trial was completed but before a decision was issued, EPA proposed an administrative rule that would exempt all water transfers from permitting under the Clean Water Act. The South Florida Water Management District  the defendant in the backpumping case  explained that the rule is "expressly designed" for the backpumping lawsuit.  Thirteen states and the Canadian province of Manitoba filed comments in opposition to the proposed EPA rule as did over 50 national conservation organizations.  Earthjustice will take the EPA to court to challenge the legality of the new water transfers exemption rule when it is adopted by EPA. The theory of the case will be that EPA may not legally exempt any polluters from the Clean Water ActÂs permitting requirements.

Try staking the shrubs up. The root of your problem with those may be deformities due to careless container culture, so that they have wadded roots that are not anchoring them adequately. Or if planted recently, they have not taken hold yet - although there should have been good rooting out last fall, if they had a high percentage of intact roots, and were in their current positions in time for that. Being suckerous the roses have the advantage of being able to grow out and away from their original planting situations. The daphne may have to be staked indefinitely if it does not become adequately rooted later. And if it is Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata' those often have a sideways orientation anyway - although I don't know if this is an inherent characteristic or due to deformed roots not being able to keep them fully upright.

On Mon. I talked to landlord's son, about rent cheque, he said Dad had gone to their newly-purchased cottaqge 80 mi. or so north of Toronto for the weekend, so he was a long way from here ... and how was my driveway? We got only a small amount of snow, being 20+ miles s w of London, so I said that I could see dirt. He came and blew it out on Tues, and I thought that I should have told him not to bother, as I wasn't going anywhere, anyway. On Tues. afternoon I visited neighbour's, we thought that it would be a good idea for me to go home. But, being addicted to internet ... ... when I left their place, I turned north, about a ten mile trip to the main village where I use computer ... the road was good all the way, to I spent time at KT.En route home, I'd wondered about taking a bit longer route home, but found only a short distance of rather heavy going near a farmer's field where the road isn't higher ... but there was space so I drove partly in the other lane, there being minimal traffic on that road. No schools busses running, schools had been closed, in London and north of there. On Wed. my friend whom I'd helped move said that I could get a chest that he was giving me, so I went to town and got it, plus got new tires to replace the one that I had, which were almost as bald as I ... or is it that I was almost as bald as they? Library closed, I went to another, several miles out of my way - sign on door saying due to weather conditions, all libraries closed. But I went to the village where I was Tues. ... that library was open. Landlord arrived early Wed. evening - there'd been a 17-car pile-up about 20 mi. e. of London on the freeway, they had to detour. He was on his way home then, came to see that I was O.K. (my furnace wouldn't start, a week or so ago): he's a really nice guy. Got home safely, last night. I have a shovel in the car, and some extra clothing (but not much food, no candle). Was scheduled for visit this morning with laser clinic where they'd shot foamy irritant into my leg in early fall, and after a couple of weeks I had the embolism, as the lady wanted to check how I am. I've had no discomfort since the day of the embolism, and have been able to do pretty well what I did before. It seems that the hematology doc figures that my leg is clear, so he doesn't figure that the embolism came from there ... and it seems that I had two of them, so one must have been silent for a while. I may be on rat poison for a half year or a year ... or maybe for longer (if I'm still around) ... ... but I hear that if it's under five years, I don't start looking like a rat. So ole joyful hasn't got stuck and is getting along fine. Haven't heard from Iva Mae. ole joyful