This is so awful.... I was working at that time, I do homecare nursing, 10P-6A last night, and this case has two siblings with a genetic syndrome, so there are two nurses. My co-worker weighs nearly 400 lbs, and we work in conjoined rooms in a 100+ year old farmhouse, even an average-sized adult produces a fair amount of vibration/shaking when they're moving about... Lots of people up here felt the shaking, more than one person i talked to was sitting in a parked car, and thought someone was messing with them , bouncing the car...but me, i'm so used to being bounced around when i work with this gal, it didn't even register. I had the morning news on, so i heard about it immediately, said, 'Hey, Charlene, did you know we just had a earthquake?' She's pretty used to being an environmental mover and shaker, too...she didn't notice either!

It could have been your winter, a freeze at the wrong time could have done the flower buds in, I almost lost my rhubarb patch which I've had for years from the winter we just had, freezing doesn't bother rhubarb if fact it needs it but having a very mild winter and then the deep freeze after it started to grow almost wiped it out. Or... it could be your forsythia bloomed it's heart out last year and just needs to recuperate. Lilacs sometimes take a year off, if this happens the trick for these guys is the year they're loaded with bloom is to take half of them off so they don't poop themselves out and have the strength to give a decent flower show the following year. Annette

Speaking of a curse... I've been having strange trouble with scarlet runner beans. Last year, a friend told me about how lovely they were and asked if he could plant them where they'd grow on my fence. I said yes and he put an entire packet in the ground, along ten feet of fence. He planted them in April, way too early (I didn't realize what he was out there doing until he came in and announced he was done). Most of them rotted in the ground. I assumed they all would and started to dig up the area in May. I discovered that three plants had made it, but one was already nibbled to the ground by a rabbit or other critter. In digging up the area to plant other stuff, I accidentally killed another. The last one struggled for a long time and eventually produced three beans. Only three. So this year I planted those three beans. All came up. I accidentally bumped one and it freakishly broke in half and died. Another had the growing tip damaged (I'm not sure by what) and never made it. The last grew slowly... so slowly... and produced three seed pods. I zealously guarded these pods against husband and children, reminding them every time we picked beans not to pick THOSE pods. Leave them be, let them ripen. Last week I cleaned out all the other plants growing on that fence and cut down the sunflowers, etc. I didn't have time to do it neatly, so there were a lot of stragglers. We had a house sitter over - the same friend who had wanted to plant the scarlet runners in the first place. We were in a hurry when we left and I didn't give any specific instructions about the garden (not that I'd even thought about it). When we came back and I was unpacking, I saw my garden basket near the door had four bean pods in it and one was a scarlet runner pod! I asked him, "What happened to the other two? This was on a plant with two other pods." He said, "What? Oh, well, the other ones didn't look very good. I think squirrels got at them. I threw them away." I have a bad squirrel problem, but I've grown beans for two years and I have yet to have a squirrel (or anything else) eat the bean pods. Hoping the squirrels had only chewed on the pods and there were a few seeds left, I asked where he'd thrown them away. He said the trash. So I looked. All I found was carefully hulled pods, hulled by a human. When he saw that I was looking, he said, "I just threw the beans out. They were kind of dry and hard." This is a nice guy. Were it nearly anyone else, I would suspect malice. But he's dumb and nice and well-intentioned. I took a deep breath. "Okay. Where did you throw the beans?" He said (and I'm not exaggerating or kidding here), "Just out in the back yard. I was hoping a squirrel or a bird might eat them... I'm sorry." I bought a flashlight (my old one was dead) and searched. I found three. This morning I found two more after carefully raking the area where I'd found the other three. That's probably all there were, as they weren't big pods. There are three beans still in the pod that was in the basket. I imagine that he thought he'd help finish cleaning off the fence and noticed a few bean pods. After that, it's sheer human perversity and the absurdity of life. Was he bored and decided to shred the pods, then tossed the seeds when he was done? If so, why carry the hulls inside to put in the trash? Did he think that the dried out pods wouldn't make good snap beans (I haven't grown dry beans so he hasn't seen that)? It's just weird. Plain weird. It's not a big loss to me, as I could just buy a packet of seeds and be as well off, maybe more. Plus the scarlet runners are apparently very accident-prone and don't grow well where I'm planting them. But it was bizarre that after two years of coddling, most of my seeds get tossed out so "a squirrel or a bird might eat them" by a well-meaning helper.

Thank you Skybird for the encouragement and kind words. I took your advice as the sky is looking quite dark and suspicious in this cooler weather so I dragged out the other plastic lawn chairs to tent over all that I could. And you're right the rain was the best part. We have had several good rains in the past few weeks. I put out some large buckets to catch the rain and they were filled to the brim. Trees look happy and the lawn which I refuse to water more than once a week is looking like it may come back to life. Steve, I checked out Ben's link you attached and I did not get it as bad as he did. Poor guy. We work so hard and then to have that happen is a bummer. Great life lessons in patience I say (whether we like it or not). Charlene