Our city composts the autumn leaves. There is not much likely input of anything noxious, though there is the nuisance of occasional pieces of plastic bags and some big chunks of clay from when the blades of the mixing dozer go too low. The zoo composts elephant, giraffe, and zebra manure, and possibly some of their hay or wood chip bedding and litter. Except for occasional to rare medicines I see little to worry about here too. Healthy compost is undoubtedly growing some antbiotics on its own so I don't worry too much about those. The arsenic that went into chicken food and medicine is a different matter. Heavily sprayed or treated grass (e.g., golf course) would give me concern about using clipping for compost or mulch for food plants, true, though possibly not for ornamentals.

We've had quite a few honey bees buzzing around my caerulea passion flowers this spring--last year I had a few bumblebees, but that was all. While their numbers were heartening, I saw two things in recent days that gave me concern, and both happened around dusk. The first, early last week, was a bee crawling around on one of the passion flowers. I'd been covered with pollen, so I knew it'd been there for a while. But it was just moving around, not really feeding, and unwilling to fly off. I watched it for a while, expecting it to leave any moment since the sun was down, but it never did even as it was getting dark. I checked the next morning, but of course the bee was gone. Then on Monday I took my daughter to church for a function. At about the same time of day as the previous incident, I noticed a bee *walking* along the sidewalk. Not flying, walking. It went one direction for a while, then turned and went over the edge into the parking lot. Then it meandered a while, not going any particular direction. I eventually had to go inside. I don't know if these two bees were sick, injured, disoriented or what, but something was amiss with them. No idea if it's related to the disappearing hives, tho.

I don't know zone alarms well, nor firefox too well, its not my normal everyday browser. But I do know that firefox will disable any 'Plug-ins, Add-ons, Extensions, etc that are incompatible with it. This does not mean ZoneAlarms is not acting as firewall. It only means that whatever plug in for some kind of added protection beyond the normal firewall rules isn't working. Might possibly be you could uninstall zone alarms completely somehow, and reinstall it completely fresh... hopefully zone alarms is smart enough it would recognize the particular plug in isn't compatible with current firefox versions and not install that plugin, but perhaps maybe a different one. I'm just guessing.. I really don't have much respect for zone alarms from years ago experiences and don't know if they have code writers that would check compatibilities now or not - but for something as popular as firefox they certainly should. This post was edited by mikie on Wed, Apr 17, 13 at 23:51

More on my insurance situation to which I referred above. My landlord requires that I have tenant's insurance on the house contents, and, as I mentioned, the company carrying my auto insurance back in '06 did not offer coverage for under $25,000., and my contents were less than $10,000. ... plus, when we investigated the situation, they didn't like some of the plumbing and wiring system, according to the independent agency that represented them ... so I told them that I would not be renewing my auto insurance with the former company, either. Later I got a request for payment from the earlier company and tried unsuccessfully to contact them to say that I'd cancelled. Later I got a registered letter telling me that they were no longer covering my auto insurance ... and that I owed them $137.00 for the coverage which I'd had prior to their cancellation. I told them that I'd told the agent that I would not be renewing, and they said that that notification had to be in writing .. and I said that their agent had not informed me that such a cancellation was required. I told them that, as I'd had a situation where my vehicle had been hit by another in the meantime, that I'd be making a claim. They said that, since I was covered by another company, that they would not recognize such a claim. So I told them that they wanted my money for coverage that I'd said that I no longer needed ... but were refusing to make a payout relative to such coverage. Since then, I have received a number of calls from a collection agency, then there's a quiet period, then there's another group trying to collect. Recently when I answer the phone, there's a short pause, then a canned voice says, "Please hold while I transfer you", then there's a pause, and a machine instructs me that if I know my account number, to please give it, and asks for my phone number. I say that they didn't identify their company, that I'm not aware of any account with them and they must have a bad memory, for they knew my phone number when they called me a couple of minutes ago ... and that I have a hard time remembering it, as I never call home, insofar as the only residents here when I'm gone is the occasional mouse. The other day when I answered, I got to speak to a warm body, and when I told her my story, she said that I needed to pay, and could I pay if they reduced the fee by 20% (which they seldom do for accounts under $200.), and I told her that I don't give credit card numbers over the phone, so she offered to have me transfer via a certain bank, but I wasn't enthusiastic about that propoal. When I said that I might die in the meantime ... she said that she guessed that I'd just have to put up with the ongoing calls. I didn't ask her whether they had an idea of where they'd phone after I'd died ... I guess that can wait for the next time that I get to speak to a warm body. However ... they usually call in the mid-morning, and a couple of days ago when the phone rang about that time, I almost didn't nswer ... and it was my daughter calling from AZ ... and it was about 6:40 a.m. her time ... so we had a nice visit ... and I decided that I'll be answering the phone in future. I've heard that ancient people get rather stubborn ... do you think that there might be any truth to that rumour ... ... or could it be just another of those urban (well, in this case, "rural") legends? I hope that you all have a really great post-holiday weekend. For retired folks ... every day's weekend. I you don't have a retirement plan in place, maybe it's time to get moving on one ... the longer you leave it, the steeper the hill that your invested dollars must climb. ole joyful