I am rural too, Marda........I'm not in the city. Until very recently, as soon as you crested the hill after the turn off to my road and got past the small residential section you sank into a glen and it was pitch black and remained so until you got to our property. I'm glad you don't have to live with it, but I'm asking you if you know why you don't. You said "We can't control everything that's built but we can put restrictions on night lighting, and noise levels and we do". Well, our township is unzoned, as is a large part of the county........so we are actually more rural than your area. And the fact that we don't control is why we have so little regard for preserving the sanctity of our surroundings in as natural a state as possible. What I am saying is that, in order for your community to have reached the point where it is controlled, somebody had to raise consciousness and make noise. The voters had to have been swayed somewhere in their lives through reading or conversations to have passed restrictions, as a group. It has to happen here before we irreparably change the face of this once very agrarian part of our state. Once it's gone......it's hard to undo. I suspect your community is more of the anomaly, than mine. We are still the farming community trying to make the transition to a non-agrarian trend in which this country is heading. It hasn't even dawned our community to preserve its legacy. Your historical part of the state is light years ahead of us on that. We are just going to wake up and find it gone, like the rest of Generica. And, I think this is a common trend as you go west across American farmland and that's why I took the liberty to say "Americans" instead of our community. No, most of our stores in the near-by town are not open 24 hours a day. Just the one huge shopping area on one long, barren of nature strip. But, that's where all of our stores are. And there are very few independent business left there. They are chains, and boxes ......and more chains and boxes. We have no business to speak of in our inner city. If you want peace, quiet and darkness........just live downtown.

I just attended a talk by a pro estate maintenance gardener--she said, over and over, "March and October, grab it like hair and cut off half." General advice for most perennials here. Having said that, Echium cadicans-- prune flower stems off after flowering to tidy up the plant and cut back hard in late fall to reduce size and encourage new growth from lower branches. Good to wait until you see a little bit of new growth appearing. The plant will produce new blooming stems for next year. An established Butterfly bush, whack away, it will all grow back. Ivy Geranium, cut back hard but leave some foliage so the plant can feed itself. Calandrinia (now Cistanthe) I find best re-rooted from cuttings when it looks ratty. Or just cut off anything that looks bad--it resprouts new growth readily, but again doesn't look as good as a fresh plant.

I hate that it gets dark so early now. Me too. Next month it will be dark at 4 PM. I'm a slug without sunlight and can run like the Energizer Bunny on long days in June. Becoming a snowbird looks better every year :D Does anyone else get thrown off by the time change? Don't know if I have a weird bio-rhythm or an acutely sensitive internal clock or what, lol. It feels like jet lag. It even happens when I travel back home, an hour difference in the time zone. Takes a good few days to 'adapt'. Just curious if anyone else experiences that?

I don't get why people get so worked up over it. Sheesh. Aren't there a lot better things to stress you out? Disclaimer: I have mostly atomic clocks so very little resetting around here. I don't have a structured life, having to report somewhere at a certain time. I sleep when I want and do things when I want. The only, albeit slight impact on me is store hours but an hour give or take is petty in my life. And I'll say that when I was working semi-normal to normal hours I really enjoyed having the sun in the afternoon. When I'd work nights, it was nice to have the sun up "earlier". Seems to me the ones who go craziest over it are the ones impacted the least! My dad used to get so worked up over DST. He'd be screaming "YOU CAN CHANGE THE CLOCK BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE THE SUN!" Uh yeah, don't you get it? You CAN'T change the sun, so you change the clock. In today's popular vernacular, "DUH!" And ironically, he seemed to always enjoy having daylight when he'd be driving home from work. My estimate is 90% of people who grouse about DST are hobbyists. They make a hobby out of complaining! Nothing FORCES you to change your clocks. Go by your own time. I'm on CST (Cynic Saving Time) year round. I don't get worked up over it. Saves me stress and provides entertainment watching people making mountains from the proverbial molehills.