I loved your pictures and your new house. It looks almost exactly like a house I rented in Calif. over 40 years ago. I loved that house it was magic. It was also haunted but thats another story. How fortunate you are that you can do what you want to it. We couldn't do anything of course and that was frustrating but thanks for your pictures. They really take me back.... McT

Hi all, I just came back to the computer after a few days of hard-core tomato-picking and processing, and no computing! (I am already sick of tomatoes.) This has been a fascinating thread to read. Linda, I know well your thoughts on Bt and its destructive power, but I grow three corn crops...early, mid-season and late. Usually the early corn ripens early enough that I don't have to worry about corn earworms or corn borers. But, without Bt, I wouldn't get any mid-season or late corn worth eating. If some desirable caterpillars die in the process, that's unfortunate but that's jsut the way it goes. I try to keep the killing of all insects to a minimum, but there's times it's necessary. I refuse to feel guilty for dusting BT on a tiny portion of our 14 acres, since the rest of the acreage is not treated for anything. OKC1, what incredible helpful advice you offered in your post! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us! I always love reading what you write. Susan, What am AMAZING amount of DE information you packed into one post! I love DE because I know I'd have to use more "hard-core" bug solutions were it not for DE. And, I'm with you on it being a bad year for the moths and butterflies. I'm wondering if it is drought-related? We have fewer butterflies this year than ever, and it is very sporadic. We'll see a few for a couple of days, and then not see any at all for the longest time. And, it is TOO HOT outside for man or beast now, isn't it? Hi again, Linda. I haven't seen any hornworms in the garden yet either, which seems sort of odd. I do have 3 plants out of about 100 that have some sort of damage that certainly looks like hornworm damage, but can't find one of those caterpillars anywhere. I know they can disappear into the green foliage of the plants, but usually I can spot them anyway. Not so this year. Hope y'all are having a lovely weekend. It is too, too hot and dry here. Dawn

Those are just dried leaves. That's what they look like. See those roots developing at the nodes? Your cutting is already rooted. Just carefully snip some of those leaves - without disturbing the roots - and then plant the stem in a pot and lightly water. I'd probably plant the stem exactly as it appears in the image, with the stem horizontal rather than vertical. The new growth will be upright. Josh

Oh, yeah, anthropogenic climate change is definitely real. There's no doubt about it. Heat records are being broken far more often and by much wider margins than cold records, and we're seeing more and more record-breaking floods in already-rainy areas and record-breaking droughts in already-dry areas (which is to be expected because hotter air evaporates more water). Also, average temperatures in most of Tennessee have risen a few degrees in the past decade alone (1991-2020 vs. 1981-2010 NOAA climate data); average precipitation risen a few inches equally rapidly, too. I find it more likely that the destruction of wild palm populations was due to urban sprawl, irresponsible agriculture and rampant fire suppression. (Dwarf and saw palmettos actually thrive in fire-stricken pine savannas.) We've seen this with longleaf pines, too. The construction of reservoirs can't have helped, either; most subtropical North American palms actually thrive in poorly-draining soil, contrary to stereotypes about palms needing well-drained sandy soil. Besides, the wild dwarf palmettos in Cherokee County, AL and Hardin County, TN were seemingly unknown prior to the 21st century and are still little-known; if they could survive the severe volcanic winters in 1783-84 (which caused ice floes off of the Louisiana coast and a frozen Mississippi River in New Orleans) and 1816 (which caused deadly June and August frosts at least as far south as East Tennessee), surely the ones in the Deep South would've been unfazed by a volcanic winter in the Little Ice Age too! My guess as to what happened at Cape Hatteras is maybe a severe Category 5 hurricane snapped or washed away all of the cabbage palmettos (and the land they grew on); it's more hurricane-prone than anywhere other than Florida and parts of the Gulf Coast due to its extremely exposed location right by the Gulf Stream. With the Cuban royal palms in Central Florida, I'd guess that the Little Ice Age did them in (probably same for the Spanish moss in colonial-era Maryland), whereas other palm species were able to adapt to the centuries of a slightly cooler climate; some things are just down to chance. As for the Brazoria palmettos in Texas, I seriously doubt that those are cabbage palmettos. It's more likely that they're an ancient hybrid between dwarf and cabbage palmettos that migrated westwards. Maybe they could also be a more evolved subspecies of the dwarf palmetto than the Louisiana palmetto is. They're too cold-hardy to be pure cabbage palmettos, and them being a hybrid of the dwarf and Mexican palmettos has been ruled out. P.S.: There were no glaciers in Virginia in the Quaternary Ice Age as far as I know. The only Quaternary glaciations that I know of in the South were an alpine glacier on Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina and the southern edge of the Laurentide Ice Sheet covering modern-day Louisville, KY. Even the majority of Missouri, parts of Southern Illinois and most of West Virginia and the coastal mid-Atlantic escaped glaciation during every Quaternary glacial period; anywhere that was once covered in alpine glaciers would have cirques, while the LIS destroyed bedrock in old hills and left behind glacial till on top of whatever was left.