At a rest stop on a tour in Italy a couple of years ago, the restroom had a couple of stalls with the hole in the floor and footprints, while the others were modern. One teenaged girl got back on the coach to report that she had gone in one of the first kind and exclaimed, "I didn't know what to do!" Farm girl that I am, I wondered how she wasn't able to figure it out, even in the event that as a small girl she hadn't in an emergency been taken somewhere in the grass by her mother. I'm afraid I've become a bit of a cynic in my declining years.

I have two plants. One was turning dark brown on the edges. That would undoubtedly be from over-watering. The water meter read dry all around and moist in the middle. Water meters don't measure moisture, they measure electrical conductivity. Fill a clean cup part full of distilled water, insert a clean water meter probe and note it reads 'DRY'. Sprinkle some salt in the water (makes the water conduct electricity) and watch the meter move to 'WET'. It's much better to use a 'tell'. See below. I soaked it and the nursery said to take take it out if the pot and ket the rootball dry out. After I did that, I repotted and soak it. The advice to remove the root/soil mass was to pull the excess water out of it. Putting it back in the pot and soaking it undid what would have otherwise been beneficial. I also cut the brown off of the edges. No problem in doing that. You should find this piece about Good Growing Habits helpful. The shortest route to green thumb status starts with learning all you can, instead of trying dozens of different things and ending up totally confused by the mixed results. When you learn what to do beforehand, you don't spend your valuable time getting bit on the butt by mistakes; rather you use your practical experience to validate what you already learned. Practice that, and you'll leave the 'trial-and-error crowd' standing in your slipstream. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. The advice to water when the top inch or two of the soil is dry is almost always counter-productive. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

I'll admit that I've started buying more frozen prepared food since Trader Joe's came to town. I'm single and cook for my grandson - I prepare fresh organic for him (except for Trader Joe's frozen black bean taquitos and Amy's black bean chili from a can). I feed him much differently than I want to eat (he gets lots of calorie dense food here because he's nutrition deprived at home), so preparing 2 different meals is just not something I'm interested in doing. I've started buying TJ's frozen organic riced cauliflower for me...it's so wonderful to just pour out a serving without having to cut up a whole cauliflower, cook, then rice and freeze it. I tried their grilled Mediterranean veggies, because cooking a whole eggplant, zucchini and then red peppers makes more than I want to eat at once. I'm not good about freezing things myself when I have extra like that. Once in a while I buy Tj's Mandarin Chicken in the freezer aisle. It's yummy! I buy their precooked bacon, because my grandson loves it and it's so easy, and non-messy. I've bought their organic frozen pancakes, because, again, I don't want to make 3 pancakes for an 8 year old and I don't eat them. I could make a whole batch and freeze them myself, but I'm just not interested in spending my time doing that. I do that when I make him waffles, however. Now that if confessed my convenience food sins, I have to say that I actually laughed out loud a few years ago when I saw frozen, cooked oatmeal. Really? You can boil water to make your own as quickly as you can heat that up in the micro. But who am I to judge?

gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9) It doesn't make one iota of difference if the homeless problem is confined to a single block, a single area or the whole city. The question is why are they exempt from this "state of emergency'". Why are they allowed to roam the streets spreading the virus? Up until now local governments claim they can't force them off the street due to their civil rights. Well now is the excellent opportunity to do just that. If businesses can be closed and people told where they can and cannot congregate then so should the homeless be told what they can and cannot do. But the bottom line homelessness creates a lot of jobs for people who wouldn't have jobs if the problem were actually fixed. Gotta do something with all those sociology degrees. Not everyone gains a professorship. Homeless outreach groups enable, they fix nothing. Developers get large building contracts lumping homeless in with low income seniors politically. It is the cities' opportunity to get the addicts and thieves and lifestyle homeless off the streets and into mandatory shelters. If they truly wanted to fix this, this is the perfect opportunity to cull the real homeless from the vagrants. But they don't want to. The homeless industrial complex has grown too big. It's continuing economy matters more than lives of people or the country's economy.