I have question regarding all of this. Today, my father and I cleaned 20 years worth of built-up sediment runoff from my house gutters. The roof is asphalt shingle, from 1996 and I don't believe the gutters have ever been cleaned until today. We had buckets of tarry black sludge, water and rocks that had unlodged from the shingles. When I wasn't looking, my dad decided to empty a few buckets worth of the liquid portion to reduce the weight. He didn't strain the liquid, he just poured off the top, so it was black nasty tar-water. And guess where he dumped it? In his septuagenarian wisdom he dumped that black water into my veggie garden because it wouldn't be as visible, since the soil was also dark. I am pretty upset about it and felt he basically turned the center of my garden into a contaminated brownfield site. I stopped him from pouring the final bucket in there once I noticed what he was doing, but already several had gone in. I appreciate that he wants to help out, but I never wanted him here to do this job; he imposed on me, sort of telling me it needed to be done. Now I'm thinking about dismantling the garden, raking it out and seeding with grass and giving up entirely on the idea. I don't want to eat from it anymore. I'm also upset that I had just planted some things in there not too long ago. The smell was foul from the sludge and I had to wash my hands 5 times with various soaps and pummus to get the odour out. Surely the tar-sediment which built up from sitting for 20 years in gutters is carcinogenic and awful for anyone to ingest. Are my fears reasonable? Will that stuff wash away by summer, or will it be absorbed by the plants and maybe give me a tumour some 15 years down the road? I'll always look back to this episode if that does happen and I kept eating from that garden...

We are getting it now and have already shovelled once, help came along which was nice, then it has started again and falling steadily, kind of quiet and pretty out there if it weren't for all the other. Am I fighting addiction, no no no. I'm fighting covetousness. Somebody posts a picture of a plant, and I just gotta have it. Or I see it on a website. Or another forum. Or a catalog. Or a botanical garden (their bougainvillea and a couple other things come to mind). Maybe it's ok, that commandment, can't remember which one says do not covet thy neighbor's house (have been guilty of that but not my neighbor's, a particular one that overlooks the river, just that one, not all of them, so I have an out), thy neighbor's wife (no, not an issue, well husband, let's not go there), thy neighbor's goods (oops, guilty of that and 'twould include plants). But wait. You people aren't my neighbors much as I might wish it otherwise. But I posted over on perennials on another thread a dwarf Asiatic lily, Crimson Pixie, almost a neighbor has one. Does down the block and across the street count? No, why lie to myself and the world. I've gone overboard on plants and seeds, no question. Then starts the rationalizing, but, but, maybe. I wonder if that company has any other seeds I might want, most of it is wildflowers. Anybody know of something else there? They don't have that gorgeous Sanguisorba menzii I saw paired with Patty's Plum Poppy over on the perennials forum, just a white one.

Thomas Barret in Harnessing the Earthworm _____________________________________________ They are sometimes swallowed by birds and fail to digest and are then dropped in a new location, perhaps on a high mountain or on an island of the sea, or some other out-of-the-way place where it would have been impossible for a mature worm to find its way. _____________________________________________ Funny I just got to that part and when I had wrote it before it was more just intuition rather than gained from reading or experience. Something else that might fit into this thread well that has been gnawing at me a little is the remarks from Pete regarding the reduction of material on its way to becoming castings to the extent that maybe 10% is realized in the form of castings from a given amount of material. This has had me thinking and is somewhat confirmed in the above mentioned book though not really spelled out clearly, at least I have not gleaned it as of yet. My thoughts are that if we say an earthworm consumes its own weight in soil every day then the resultant excrement will much depend on how well the worm is able to reduce it on its fast path from one end to the other. A worm in rich material such as finely prepared scraps or manure would not need to consume as much material to get the nutrients it needs, eating dirt means very little nutrient so much more needs to be pass through the factory to support the same high standard of livin. So a fine dining worm can subsist with a lesser daily volume then one scraping along on inferior fare and would subsequently produce a smaller volume of castings where one that is choking down a large percentage of dirt is going to be passing more of that material and needing to run ever more through the mill to get the same nutritional value. Since a worm will homogenize mineral content from the soil along with the organic output the dirt part is a good thing as it adds these minerals to the litter in a water soluble form ready to be taken up by plant roots and they in turn bulk up the VC daily take (or I suppose that would be leave). Just some thoughts and not very organized at this point so take it all with a grain of salt or soil if your digestive tract can handle it.

Donna "being sent to the Tower" (of London) is luckily just an expression these days although way back when it was a Royal fortress those who had committed treason languished there and whiled away the time watching the scaffold being put up for a little light head-removal. Yoyo, Camilla has come through everything amazingly well. Goes out meeting and greeting, doesn't appear to have become 'grand' and gets on with the job, keeps her head down, stays well away from the press . . . and although Charles behaved very badly towards the late Diana, they do seem a genuine happy couple. I think the Queen has reigned for so long now and set such a good example of how to behave it will be difficult for anyone having to 'follow-on', but they (and we) will adapt . . .think of the hooha when Ed VIII abdicated . . . with time it all blew over. Annpan, I don't know about the Press being 'spiteful' towards MM. Certainly when she first 'arrived' they trod very respectfully around her and the 'colour' thing was never an issue with them or the public at large. I think it wasn't until she started complaining about her 'treatment' and how not enough people had asked how she was when pregnant etc and wouldn't play the game that they became less understanding especially when her LA 'friends' began to wade in. I think the general feeling is "OK, go your own way but don't expect the taxpayer to pick up the bill and stop insulting your new family."