Good afternoon.... Greetings from Seattle...oops, I mean Boston. [g] The weather, instead of being aggravating, has become a daily joke. The silver lining is that no watering and no air conditioning at least. ..... This has been the longest thread! Nice to see a little more activity today. Kathy, that software looks pretty useful for $20. So does this mean that you have decided to take out the cement? I was looking at that photo of your side yard and envisioning what a great place for a very functional work area with seating area surrounded by tons of containers a la Deanne and veggie containers a la Woody, and no weeding. :-) You could even artistically paint stepping stones across it in the same configuration. Marie, your Waldorf salad sounded wonderful. I was reminded of Chelone's hilarious chipmunk adventure when a chipmunk showed up at the base of the bird feeder helping himself to fallen seed on Sunday. I rarely see one. Then this morning looking out the kitchen window, I did a double take. Inside a globe shaped squirrel proof bird feeder, that has a metal cage around the inner tube of seed, I see the chipmunk! He is so cute and looking very well fed. He made several trips back and forth to the feeder this afternoon, stuffing his face. I would hate to think what problems in the garden he could accomplish if he is feeding a family. I have no idea what to do about him, with no cats or dogs at our house. Then I had a second encounter with animals. DD stayed over last night and I drove her to the train this morning and on the way home, a cat followed by 5 tiny kittens crossed the street in front of the car. I slowed down and watched them and they went into a driveway. The mother cat was out in the open and looking back at me watching me. She stood across the driveway from the kittens who had all run under a car in the driveway and were watching me and the mom. It was so strange. I can't imagine if someone owns the cat/kittens that they would just let them roam free. Also found myself wondering about the kittens behavior. I would have thought they would have stuck like glue to the Mom. There is an empty lot next to the house where they were running around and I wonder if they were ferral cats or belonged to the owner of the driveway they were in. Woody...your rose swag is looking great for it's first year! Anita...I love your Bowle's Golden grass. It is one of my favorites and I keep looking for one and haven't found one yet. Cindy, what great news, that Chloe is recovering! It's been a long haul for the both of you. Did you ever find out what caused the problem she had in the first place? Julie, you are amazing! lol Norma, any photos of Jasmine, Rebel and the newest addition? V....we are still in this cool, overcast weather and I am bracing myself for when it finally quits, the heat will probably be brutal. Sorry to hear your garden is suffering. Hi Denise! :-) I enjoy your longer posts, I hope you will stop throwing them away...lol. Very pretty Phlomis. I'm waiting for final photos of your new outdoor tub area. Like Denise, I am missing Deanne's posts, and more photos from Eden too. Marie, not sure I am following you, is that a photo of Ivy on the top with a photo of Reed second? I could easily say it was the same child. DS was a sweetie! Such a happy boy! Another long one from me..... pm2

Al, I went back to the nursery again today to find out if it got scalded by too much sun. Yes, it did, but just at the top, the rest of the tree looks fantastic, no sign of burning at all. I like it so much, but darn⦠The spot where I want to plant it is an open space, next to a P.P Fat Albert, with full sun... whole day. Arrggg! Very frustrated. I do not know if it won't get burnt when It gets older. I saw a mature Skyland (30ft tall) and it is completely immune to sunburn. I hope Firefly would behave better as it gets older. I might just take my chance because I like it so much. J.N

Great stories, Iva Mae. I liked the one about the underwear ... ... for those who've been around for a while, I think that possibly there should be a litle tag in some of my underwear that reads "4 - 6" ... ... as an indication of its age? By the way some of the elastic girdles that I'd made way back when are getting a bit the worse for wear. Not so much of a problem, though, when wearing long johns in winter ... ... as long as the elastics in them are fully operational. ole joyful

This is my rant, and apologies in advance for that, and also for taking this in a direction that you may or may not agree or feel comfortable with. I didn’t have any idea, when I first started this thread about “fireflies” (even if they are a touch more lackluster than many of you remember from back east) that it would turn into an in depth discussion of philosophy, ecology, and environmental ethics. However I am glad that it did. This is a conversation that EVERYONE should be having as we look upon the state of the world, and particularly nature today. If we ever have any hope of even TRYING to correct the immense injustice humans have exacted upon planet earth, we MUST talk about these things, we can’t just sit around and wait for someone else to come along and come up the answers. We must start to look for answers now, and we can’t make any meaningful gains or progress without serious, thoughtful, discussion. I have no illusion that that we are going to make any great leaps forward in a day, or a year, or a decade or maybe a century. I hold no hope that, even my lifetime, we will see much of a change at all. But that ought not prevent us from taking the first steps towards working for the solution. I do not believe in laying blame for what we have done. I do not believe that it is in the best interest of progress. What our parents, grandparents, great grandparents so on and so on, did was the best they could do with the information and the culture at hand. It is our job, not to demonize their actions, but to learn from them and try to find a way to fix the mistakes they made as best we can and prevent them from continuing into the future. As Skybird said, we have but one earth, one sky, and one water. We don’t get a “do over” this is it. This is we have to pass on to our children, and to posterity after them. Skybird, I am in awe of that presentation and very glad you shared it with us. I see a lot of parallels between the traditional beliefs the Native Indians of this Continent and my own as a believer in the Word of God and Jesus Christ. To them, they look towards their Creator and his original instructions. For me, those instructions are found in the Book of Genesis. In Gen. 1:26 God says to us: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Unfortunately, many have taken this to mean that God gave us the land to do with as we please. To subdue it to own selfish whims and desires regardless of the consequences.After all, didn’t God GIVE us the land? Didn’t He say, quite clearly, that we are to hold dominion over every living thing He had created? The answer is yes, the land DOES belong to us. But when God gave us “dominion” over His creation He was not giving the green light for the ruination thereof. What He gave us was responsibility. We have a scared covenant with the Lord to be stewards over His creation. To respect and cherish and take care of it. When God gave us dominion over the Earth, He was entrusting its well-being to us. It was not a way of saying “Well, I made it, so now do whatever you want with it, I don’t care.” The divine mandate for man to dominate the natural world is a sacred trust, not a carte blanche for destructiveness. What we see, though is quite the opposite. We take this marvelous creation built by God and exploit and destroy and neglect and take advantage of it. We scoop up large swaths of prairie by the bucketful and in its place deposit homes and shopping centers and sky rises. We poison the water and the soil and the air. We topple mountains and eviscerate forests. We wield our dominion over the plants and animals that share this place with us like a despotic ruler, merely to fulfill our own greedy and selfish desires. We are told it’s the progress of man, but how much progress can we have before we have nothing left to make it with? Currently, the State of Colorado is embroiled with the Federal Government over the listing of the sage grouse as threatened and endangered. We say that protecting industry is more important than protecting birds. We say that our children’s future depends on a vibrant economy, and to an extent I get that. But what kind of future is it in a world devoid of wild things? I for one believe my children will much worse off in a world without sage grouse than they would in a world with a little less change in their bank accounts.