Fruitnut, I wrote a response to your last question on underwatered nectarines, but I guess it didn't get through the system. I'm familiar with the underwatering symptoms you have specified. I've had that problem, too. But I'm talking about fruit which looks damaged even before the blossoms wither. The thread which discusses thrips is linked below. I think you're right about overwatering. But after cherry season, I think the best commercial stone fruits in our area are the new supersweet nectarines, until later in the season when there are a few good varieties of commercial plums. Update on CWB, Peachcot, etc: This year, I got normal bloom on my Canadian White Blenheim. I think our area doesn't get enough chill some years. But I still had delayed foliation on Stark Sweetheart. So I guess CWB doesn't have the highest chill requirement in the world. I also had some other varieties with some bloom during CWB's late bloom season. But the rain during bloom seemed to decimate the crop. I didn't get any Harcot fruit this year. I thought I had a few young fruits, but next time I looked, there was nothing. Not even fallen fruits. It's always been a reliable variety for me before. Don't know if it was blossom blight or our freak wind storms this year. Or maybe our Garden Partner ate them. It's also odd that I got a decent crop of Blenheim during the same rainy bloom season. It's notorious for blossom blight. Maybe it's just luck - the days when bloom is heaviest vs. days when it rains. I only got 3 or 4 CWB fruits on 2 trees. I ate the first one today. It had fallen off the tree. It was much sweeter than Blenheim, with a rich flavor different from the typical apricot. Refreshing rather than "sprightly", though it still had a touch of acid. I think that this is the first one I've tasted which didn't get too much water while ripening. The texture was soft, but pleasant. The color is a creamy yellow-orange - not really close to white. No red blush. I would recommend CWB for areas with just a little more winter chill than ours. It needs a pollenizer which blooms late. It's a sweet pit variety. We've also been getting fruit from a tree which is either a Peachcot or a Golden Amber. The Golden Amber near the house has died. It never did well in its location. I bought the tree I now have as a Peachcot, but later learned that this was about the time the USDA mislabeled Peachcot scions which went to wholesaler LE Cooke in a virus elimination program. The next year, trees they sold as Peachcots were really Golden Amber. If you have one of their Peachcots which is older than 10 years old, you probably have their original strain. Peachcot trees sold after the error was corrected are probably a USDA stock variety, as far as I know. There's a nursery in Texas which sells an August-fruiting Peachcot with a low chill requirement. That idea always intrigued me. Anyway, I am not quite sure if I have a Peachcot now or a Golden Amber. Both my defunct Golden Amber and the alleged Peachcot bloom over a long season. Fruiting is more prolonged than with most other apricots. Last year, I was pretty confident my "Peachcot" was Golden Amber. But this year, the flavor of the ripe fruit makes me think it might be a Peachcot, after all. The very ripe fruits are quite large, very sweet and very soft, but with a melting quality rather than a grainy or mushy quality like, say, Royalty. And it may be my imagination, but I thought I tasted some peach with the apricot. Very nice. The tree is susceptible to premature fruit drop. It's not growing in the best soil. Though it has prolonged bloom, I don't recall any signs of delayed foliation here, so it's probably suitable for areas with moderately low chill. The fruits on my little volunteer apricot tree are almost ripe. I think I did fairly well in the volunteer fruit lottery. When almost ripe, the fruit is small, highly colored with a red blush, firm - crispy to rubbery, sweet and quite tasty. Freestone. Fuzz is very scant and some of the fruits got sun damage - ugly brown patches on the sun-exposed side. I think it may the the offspring of a commercial variety. The tree is brushy with lots of short branches off the main branches which resemble long thorns, though they're not really sharp. Branches are lax. Just one example of what you can get from planting an apricot seed. I'm getting my first Santa Rosa plums. A ripe Santa Rosa really lets you know you're alive. Sweet and sour with a variety of intense flavors coming from each layer inside the fruit. The Weeping Santa Rosa is sweeter with very nice flavor, but eating a regular Santa Rosa is still a unique experience which I really like. We have too many, though. Time to call my husband's sister, who makes jam. Here is a link that might be useful: nectarines and thrips

Are you kidding? Hide the CC,I have just kicked off the season with early order of snaps,pansies and violas(already sewn,already up and will be first out to very early spring market). We're not doing vegetable market garden any more so ...LOOK OUT!Mo'Money for prudy flower sales at market a few to sneak into my flowerbeds. I'm waiting for the start date on co-op to Summer Hill Seeds. They're restocking now and we have to wait until Nov. 5 to be able to get to order. I'm feeling withdrawal already...Sweaty palms,nervous twitching,darting eyes,drooling and slobbering....ya know...the usual symptoms P

terrene: Like sooey, I only count the time actually spent watching the birds. For me, this is usually 1 to 4 hours (estimated); just spread out over the whole two days. I spent more time for the Christmas Bird Count, which was one of my two PFW days, so I called that 4 to 8 hours total. Most of my productive counting is done in the early morning hours when the birds are feeding after a long night. I'll often look at my tally sheet around 10 or 11 am and see that most of the regulars are there. There's another burst of activity after I refill the feeders in the late afternoon. I do this so that there will be plenty of food in the morning and I won't feel pressured to get out there early. The rest of the day is for stragglers and fine-tuning the count. sooey: I don't really hear the cardinals in the winter - my windows are pretty tight. The Mourning Doves are a different issue. They come at dusk, but they're so wary (I think because of the hawks) that I usually don't see them. Often I'll see 2 or 3 at a time during the daytime, but when I go out to refill the feeders I'll hear that squealing sound of a flock of panicky doves taking flight. If I look up fast, I can get a rough count of the flock, maybe 10 or 12. The other birds that come at dusk with the cardinals are the native sparrows, but these are really hard to identify - little brown birds in the shadow of a big shrub. Claire

Cool Lisa! It took almost a year for me to see a Red Belly on the suet log. Now Mr. Red belly visits the suet log almost every day. He is a noisy guy, and makes a big fuss when he's around. It seems like he's telling all the other birds to stay out of his way and they usually do. There was a Red-belly earlier in the summer that would rap on the gutter when the suet log was empty. It was quite deliberate and somewhat annoying! :) Just signed up for the PFW this morning. I did a bird count yesterday afternoon and this morning. I don't get the packet for a couple weeks, but they said it was okay to enter the data when it comes. It's fun! Had a pair of Red breasted Nuthatches this morning, and yesterday afternoon there were dozens of Juncos! At least 30 in the feeding station area and nearby grass and leaves. Along with 8 or more White throat sparrows, all pecking and scratching and rustling leaves. The ground looked like it was alive.