I never actually believe rain is going to fall when I am working outside until the raindrops are hitting me on the head. I always hope the forecast is wrong when it says it is going to rain and we don't "need" the rain. I can't help it. Next week, I'd rather be out in the garden with its' still pretty wet soil than sitting inside looking out the window as the garden turns into a lake again. My garden's soil is pretty good in the upper 4 or 5 inches, but very wet beneath that. Heather, Can you imagine what it would be like for your family if they ever had a chance to garden or farm in an area with lots of rain? Total culture shock. Jay, What will we have to talk about if y'all ever get even "average" annual rainfall there again? At this point, I'm not betting on that occurring. I hope the ton of rainfall next week hits SW OK and western/central OK and leaves me alone. They need it and our county doesn't. If it doesn't rain and ruin my plans, I'll have almost all my garden planted, weeded, mulched, etc. by next Wednesday. I will have everything planted except the true heat lovers like peppers, okra, southern peas, winter squash and melons. I'd plant them but the soil temps are not yet quite where they need to be for those, and I am still watching and waiting for a late cold spell. I've never had such a good and early planting year, even though I have had to work around multiple rain storms. The lovely temperatures make up for the rain. If the long-range forecast holds, we'll be quite a bit cooler here next week than we are right now. I should add that whenever the garden is off to a good start early in the season, it almost always gets slammed by hail, sleet or snow, so I am expecting trouble but hoping it doesn't happen. Dawn

I went through a similar quandry. In my case I had an Environmental Studies BA and was considering a MS in Hort with a design emphasis or a MLA degree. I interviewed half a dozen people in the field including an LA and everyone told me that field experience was more valuable than degrees unless I specifically wanted to do the types of large projects an LA degree gives one access to. In the end I did take some additional LA & Hort classes but did not go for an additional degree. In my experience clients that care about degrees are quite rare. One caveat, California is a more regulated place than Maine so regulatory considerations may force your hand (I side with Ivan Illich on this matter). I do think field experience in both garden maintenance and installation is extremely valuable for would be designers/ LAs. I have worked on projects designed by highly academically credentialed people who made a hash of it - they had good concepts but they didn't understand how the elements behaved in the real world. Rosarians are often niche specialists. If you're really good and good at promoting yourself you might make a go of it as rose expert alone. If you don't already have a strong IPM background I'd work on that.

I'm looking at some things on Craigslist but when I click on the sellers link to send them an email, Outlook opens. Jane, Whenever I am on a website where I click on their link to send them an email, my outlook express always opens with their addy after the To: So what I do is: I highlight THEIR address, click copy, and paste it after To: in my separate g-mail web account to write to them from there. I never use my OE to respond to any website when OE pops up. OR------If you have like I do, (my g-mails accessed in my OE) while in Outlook express, I leave as is and just change the OE address of mine to my webmail address as if I am writing from g-mail. Urlee

You can have your email enabled in your My Page page, so that people can click on your name, and then will be able to email you directly. You must do the following four things; if you didn't do even one of the 4, your email won't show up in your My Page page: At the bottom of the Kitchens Forum page, click where it says "Member Services". Then click where it says "Edit your Personal Information, Page and Preferences". Then, log in, and do the following: 1) Type in your email address in both boxes. 2) Near the bottom of that same page, there is a pull-down menu for "Show my email address to", that gives you the option of "None" or "Members" or "All". Click on "Members", and make sure "Members" stays in that view box. 3) Where it says "allow other users to send you email via forms at our site", click on that box (a check appears). AND 4) Click on the box that says "Save your Member Profile". Again, if you omitted any ONE of the above steps, your email option will not appear on your page.