Only caught the last couple minutes. I just had a male Ruby throated banded on Thursday. I live about 30 minutes from Tampa, Florida, which is on the bay. The group is banding in this area and north to see if we have a year round population of RTs in our area. In a town near here, the guy banded a dozen in a little over an hour and the person saw 4 more that weren't banded later that day. Of course we are having unusually cold weather so they may be on the move. I have had two more show up in the last 2 days. In the past years I would only see 1 for a couple days in Feb. Last Jan. I had one show up and stay for 4 months and have seen 1 or 2 off and on since then. What did they say about the migration path changing? I just caught the part that said it was, then they went to that strange one with the funny looking tail.

It took millions of years to make the oil. All that we'd used prior to a hundred years ago ... you could stick in your eye. Interesting, isn't it, some of the things that we remember? After two years of University, I went to north-eastern Sask. as a summer student minister, working in four tiny churches that only had church in the summer, where people lived many of whom had left the treeless prairies in the Dirty Thirties when the wind blew the crops away, with all that they owned on a wagon rack. In ten to fifteen years, some of them had begun to get back on their feet, in that area where there was usually somewhat more rainfall ... and some (smallish) trees. If you asked me what other things I preached about that summer, I couldn't tell you ... but I remember saying that we'd been using up petroleum for the past 20 years, from 1929 when many people drove Model "A" Ford cars, till 1949, just after World War II, like it was going out of style ... and that some day before too long, we'd run out. The Shah of Iran said quite a few years ago that we in the west were crazy to use large quantities of petroleum, including natural gas, which should be used for portable power (e.g. in autos), for fuel source in immobile power-generating plants, for within not too many years it would become very scarce. I remember when the price went up - was it around 1974? - when the OPEC people were cutting back, and Ronald Reagan said that they'd fix them ... they'd dig more wells around home and become less dependent on foreign-sourced oil! And I thought, yeah, darned fool ... dig up and use your own oil when it's currently plentiful and cheap ... and after while, when the main sources have been drained, yours will be gone, and you'll be forced to buy from other suppliers ... at far higher prices. Wouldn't it be wiser to keep some of yours available for use when supplies become scarce (and hugely expensive)? Don't we owe something to our grandchildren?? Next time you walk down the aisle in your favourite store, look at all of the plastic stuff there ... including a great deal of the packaging ... ... and wonder how many gallons of precious petroleum it took to make all of that stuff, for most of it uses petroleum feedstock. Next time you take the cap off of a bottle of water, wonder the same thing. Problem: possibly it's a different portion of the original crude oil that they use to make the plastics. For example, we can't use the part of the crude to make gasoline (or maybe only a tiny oportion of it) that's used for asphalt for the roads, or the dark and heavy bunker fuel used in some ships (that's so thick that when travelling in very cold climates, they have to run steam pipes through the tanks to make it flow, I've heard). Last year it cost more to repair my 19-year-old car, after an accident had the rear wheel track crooked, than I'd paid for it about 6 mos. earlier. But I felt that, at about 190,000 km. (120,000 mi.) it had a lot of useful miles left in it, if treated with care, and it would take quite a lot of labour but not a lot of materials to repair it. But it takes a large amount of energy to build ... and haul component parts around, prior to final sale of the whole car ... a new car. Recently when I was having a hard time passing my driving test and wondered whether I might be forced to stop driving ... I cried in my beer a bit, thinking that if I had to sell it ... that there was no way that I could sell it for more than half of what I'd put into it at that time. I look upon that extra cost as part of my contribution to reducing usage of precious petroleum, while reducing adding more heat and pollution to our atmosphere ... also precious, but often taken for granted. Some time ago when on a daily phone-in program the public radio broadcaster was discussing on our province-wind network, using solar and wind generators to replace some of our coal- and nuclear-powered generating systems, one of the people connected with Ontario Hydro, our public corporation generating and distributing power, called in to say that there was a major problem with wind, for major demand was in summer for air conditioning and in winter to provide heat, but the major winds took place in this area mostly in spring and fall. One major drawback is that we haven't found a useful way to store major quantities of electricity. Further, batteries also use precious resources, and some of them contain hazardous materials when it comes time to recycle/scrap them. It's time for us in the Western world to cut back on our consumption. It's hardly fair to tell Chinese or Indian people or others with growing wealth that they can't increase their appliance consumption to have a fridge and TV in most of their homes, when we have about four dozen appliances in each of our homes ... and consider it an additon to our economy when we currently build them to last 10 - 15 years, when the fridges built in the early years of their manufacture here would last often for 40 years. What a crock that is ... we can no longer afford such foolishness. And for the formerly impoverished people to boost auto production to have a one car in 50 driveways, when we feel deprived if we don't have three per household. I hope that you all have a wonderful Mother's Day. And be thankful for the great things that your Mom has done for you, every day (apart from spoiling you). Or, if not, that you can find it in your heart to forgive her for having neglected you, if that was your experience. ole joyful

Melissa never been to Italy in person but many times through books & movies.... I wasn't aware of the professor's death, sad, I came upon his garden's name whilst browsing François Joyaux's collection of 200 gallicas. I got to now Eleonora Garlant through this book, when I came upon this thread last year. Truly interesting lady. Though more interesting is the rose Andrea Di Robilant was looking for its identity. I communicate frequently & fluently in French living in Montreal :-) Thank you for your interest in my small garden. However being in part shade and zone 4, rose growing is a challenge, mostly experimental with roses subjected to less than the optimal growing conditions. However, I don't agree with Campanula's sole preference for words. Words while highly evocative in literature, are often misleading in rose identification. If you've had patience enough to go through the Francis Dubreuil thread many of the problems with this rose happens because of over use of adjectives, pink, cerise, dark red, amaranth..... That doesn't mean that photos aren't misleading at all but its easier to identify a pink rose visually than verbally. The ideal online ID would be a combination of both :-)

The castigation can end over the wrong word choice. A quick word choice perhaps better replaced with something else. Let's call it an "annoying, unwanted nickname" that for whatever reason is disliked. Your name is Allison, you hate being called Ally, and your siblings do so when they want to annoy you. I think that's what's happened in this thread. I didn't make up the issue, it's there. I pointed out that it was odd for a local to use it. Those making a weak and childish effort to be annoying by insisting on finding multiple instances of use (that everyone knows about) are welcome to do so. It's not particularly clever but the word doesn't bother me. Call me Ally if you want. Like most people around here, I don't use "Frisco". If you want to, go ahead. What is annoying is people making an effort to be annoying.