Really thank you for the reply. Very good committment on your part. I want/hope the city to dump vacuumed leaves in same area they have been using (but stay 500 ft from the river per EPA).. With existing city equipment and/or obtaining surplus eguipment I think with a volunteer staff of 3 to 6 we can keep this windrowed, turned, screened if needed and dispensed to end user to allow space for next years inbound. With the $25K landfill tab even if expenses were $24,999 and compost were available for free to users is a great attribute rather than placement in the landfill. The $40K "grant" would/could assist in and almost fund used screener, used Bobcat, and fenced covered area for eguipment storage. The landfill deposit just sucks....... It makes my piles (appx 1000 cu yards of/when finished) more valuable and I should be happy about that. I was just doing this because the stuff was setting there, not as a futuristic occupation. Thanks again Lloyd for your unselfish information and enjoyed looking at your experience..(but glad ours is vac'd not bagged also).. ..... Dag

Okay, I hate to rain on everybody's parade. I have been doing a lot of reading on bees this summer/fall. First of all honeybees are not native. However, they were spread far and wide by the colonists. They were probably not a problem until recently. That is to say when they started to be factory farmed. There are lots of studies documenting the different diseases that Apis mellifera have suffered with this type of treatment. One study documents the loss of around 35% of colonies in the 2007-2008 period. This was assumed to be an underestimate. Anyway, when honeybees started to decline, they looked to bumble bees for pollination. They transported bumbles to Europe and back. They believe that diseases were brought back. In a landmark study, bumble bee species were surveyed in Illinois. Four species were found to be locally extripated, Bombus borealis, Bombus ternarius, Bombus terricola and Bombus variabilis. Others were in decline. These include species that were commonly found before. Many theories abound with probably several causes. One theory is that the widespread use of pesticides has lowered bees natural defenses to disease and pests. With the factory farming of bees many pests from abroad were spread within the US. In addition, the loss of habitat for many native bees is a real problem. Just like our lovely butterflies. It is only with the loss of honeybees that farmers are starting to look at native bees. Often these are better at pollinating than honey bees. Several orchard bees can pollinate an entire orchard (not sure of the size they were talking about), as opposed to needing several hundred or thousands of honey bees. A blue orchard bee will forage for longer in less favorable conditions than a honeybee. The problem is that large farms have eliminated the additional forage that bees need once the crops stop flowering. Hence the need for imported honeybees because they can be brought in and removed to another farm when one crop stops flowering. Well, I go on but I am really worried about bees. Sigh, Elisabeth Decline of bumble bees (Bombus) in the North American Midwest Jennifer C. Grixtia,*, Lisa T. Wonga, Sydney A. Cameronb, Colin Favreta aCenter for Biodiversity, Illinois Natural History Survey, 1816 S. Oak Street, Champaign, IL 61820, USA bDepartment of Entomology, 320 Morrill Hall, 505 S. Goodwin Avenue, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA A B S T R A C T Declines in many bumble bee species have been documented in Europe raising several ecological and economic concerns. The nature and extent of bumble bee decline in North America is poorly understood due mainly to a lack of baseline and long-term data. Museum collections provide excellent sources of information on past and current species distributions, which can be used to infer changes in the composition of insect communities. Using the Illinois Natural History Survey�s electronic database of Hymenoptera and a recent biodiversity survey of historically sampled localities, we were able to examine changes in the richness and distribution of the bumble bee fauna of Illinois over the last century.We found that bumble bee species richness declined substantially during the middle of the century (1940�1960). Four species were locally extirpated: Bombus borealis, Bombus ternarius, Bombus terricola and Bombus variabilis. The ranges of Bombus affinis, Bombus fraternus, Bombus pensylvanicus and Bombus vagans have also decreased in Illinois. Our analyses also indicated that current bumble bee diversity is highest in northern Illinois, where conservation efforts would be most productive. Our study demonstrates that half of the bumble bee species found historically in Illinois have been locally extirpated or have suffered declines, supporting observations of broader declines in North America. Major declines in the bumble bee fauna coincided with large-scale agricultural intensification in Illinois between 1940 and 1960. Attempts to conserve bumble bees in Illinois should involve wildlife-friendly approaches to agriculture, such as increasing agricultural land set-asides and hedgerows, and employing integrated pest management

If only that Lilac looked and smelled so good all year !

Tomatoes are hardy little buggers! I hope I don't gross anyone out with this... I work for a sewer company and you would not believe some of the places that tomatoes grow and do extremely well! Some really good looking tomatoes but we don't eat them! ;) They grow on top of floating aerators, which is basically a big motor mounted on a float with a propeller that stirs the water. They grow on bar screen rakes, which is even more amazing because the rake travels up and down from 40' to 100' at different sewer plants. They get sun for about ten minutes, then they travel down into the darkness for 5 to 10 minutes at a time.