A few responses to your reflection (yeah, it took me a few minutes to figure out what a "relection" was, but I'm not criticizing because I have many figuretip-brain misfires.) First off, Garden Writer's Forum may be more correct, because it sure seems like there's never more than one of us around at a time. If this is meant to be a forum for many garden writers, then "writers'" is the correct form. Second, as to your garden question, garden web hosts many forums on many topics. Click on the "Other Forums" caption up near the top of the page and you can see the whole list. Your post on the cucomber beetle may be more appropriate on a vegetable gardening forum. Last, even though you said it wasn't needed, welcome! Hope you hang around a bit and add some life here.

I agree with a lot of what has been said, but wanted to discourage the idea of DH becoming a professsor. There are a lot of rank levels below "professor": instructor, assistant professor, associate professor - and usually anything above instructor requires a Ph.D.(not just a Masters). Teaching contracts are short term with the understanding you move up or you are out. At each level, many, many people get squeezed out - "publish or perish" - and shown the door. To make it to full professor is a significant acheivement, and the tenure (absolute job security, like the Pope) and sabbaticals (year off teaching to pursue research, etc.) are perks that just don't exist in the rest of the real world. That, the youthful culture, the prestige, and the intellectual purity and nobility of it all no doubt figure in to that job satisfaction report. Doing some teaching may be an OK way to make some interim money - but don't confuse being one of the legion of low paid instructors with being one of the elite full professors. Whole 'nother thing. Dh would need 6 years give or take for the Ph.D. and another 6 to 15 to try to climb the ladder, actually more like a pyramid with so many at the base and so few at the top. And as Sweeby says, even then many full professors make peanuts. Only the first rank universities pay really well, and those guys usually bring in huge bucks to the university in research grants and book earnings. (also, did you know a university significantly "taxes" all your outside earnings when you are full time faculty?) Going for professsor rank is a very, very competitive life, only for the truly dedicated. Not something DH should think he can do briefly while setting up a writing career. No way. Also, I agree that true writers write - no matter what. It is like a driven passion. Sounds like DH is looking for something better and thinking back on liking writing when he was in school. That's different from drive. Perhaps he should step back and open his mind to all work possiblilities. One exercise in career planning is to take some time and make a very long list of every conceivable occupation. All of them - not the ones for you. All of them. Then, and only then, strike out the impossible or absurd for you (jockey, ballerina, Microsoft chairman, pro basketball player, movie star...). Next strike out the ones requiring too much training/time (brain surgeon, astronaut, *professor*). Next strike out what is unappealing. What is left may be surprising and worth further consideration. Good luck to you and DH.

you know, since you posted about losing max, i have gone over in my mind some of the things that set me off in the weeks/months after gary's death. he suffered the ravages of cancer for 21 months before God took him home. during that whole time, he practically lived on gatorade. i bought gallons of that stuff! a couple of weeks after he died, i was in walmart. i started down the drink isle and came face to face with shelf after shelf of gatorade. i burst into tears and sobbed like a baby. people were walking waaaay around me, LOL! i left a full cart right there in the isle, went out and sat in my truck to pull myself together. it was 30 minutes before i could go back in there and get the toilet paper i desperately needed! :O fast forward a couple of months...i was in a hallmark store looking for the perfect card to send to an acquaintance who had just lost her husband. found what i was looking for and standing in the checkout line, all of a sudden the music i had paid no attention to blasted into my ear..."last dance", a song that gary used to play on the piano for me almost every day. again...tears, sobs, strange looks. after a few more of these occurrences, it finally dawned on me that (please don't think i'm crazy!) they were signs from gary. the first couple of years or so after his death, i had many. they were pretty unmistakable. just a few weeks before he died, gary told me that after he was gone and when i saw a rainbow, it meant he was thinking about me. but, if i saw a DOUBLE rainbow, that meant that he had stopped whatever he was doing and he was thinking ONLY of me. i can't even begin to tell you how many rainbows i have seen, oftentimes they were doubles. :) pennies from heaven, i have a little basket sitting next to ashley's urn where i have tossed countless pennies from heaven. look for signs from max, you will surely see them. when i lost my female corgi (gary's dog, we always said, within a year of his death), the very next day i saw a rainbow. my sign that she was with him. five months later, when i lost my little male corgi, i was out walking the danes the evening after simon left me. on our way back through the fields and up to the house, i heard in the distance the UNMISTAKABLE bark that was simon. just his way of letting me know he was all better. at first, the signs made me profoundly sad because they made me think of all that i had lost. but over time, i have come to cherish each one of them. they are few and far between now, i suppose because i don't need them as much as i did back then. max will undoubtedly let you know he is well and waiting for you. some day, no doubt in my mind, we will all be reunited. :) well, it appears i have once again written the great american novel! LOL

I've read all but the first one, though I tried to get through that one. SILENT SPRING lit the fire in my belly regarding pesticide use and helped shape the direction of my career. I first read it in college and became a thorn in the collective paws of my horticulture professors.