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 sorry I think this is user set up error here. After the creation of a message rule did you select the "Apply Now" button? Did you select all the "OK" buttons when exiting? I ask as I have been remiss in clicking all the necessary buttons when building a rule, and it has failed. In your frustration to get the message rule option to work, did you create multiple entries for the same rule? If so, remove all but one. In a last ditch effort you could remove all the message rules and start from the beginning. DA

On my screen is a Your Houzz button on the upper right hand site. Click on it. then click on : edit profile now, on the left side of my screen I have the option to click on advanced settings. Click there. Mark everything how you want... I don't want any notifications so I marked everything NEVER! don't forget to scroll down and mark UPDATE! :) Moni