I haven't been hit by lightning, but I've seen mountain lions four times in the past ten years in the San Francisco Bay area, and that's pretty unusual. The first time was in Novato, a residential suburb in Marin County. I was awakened by the sound of a woman screaming at 3:00 am. When I looked out my front window, I saw that, instead of a woman, it was a mountain lion sitting next to my curb under the streetlght, screaming his head off. This went on for about 15 minutes before he finally left. The next time was when I went hiking on Mt. Tam with a girlfriend. We hiked down to Stinson Beach and, on the return trip, we were tracked by a mountain lion for about the last 1/2 mile of the trail. He kept pace with us--in plain sight--about 100 yards off the trail as we walked extra fast. Fortunately we made it back to our car in the parking lot before he made up his mind what to do about us. And lest you think that of course hikers are more likely to see one, this was the only time in ten years I ever went on a hike (and the last time too!). The third time was when I was driving down to Monterey. I was on a public road bordering the National Guard base which contains a lot of open space. Suddenly a mountain lion burst out of the weeds and ran along the dirt frontage road on the opposite side of a chain link fence separating the base from the public road I was on. The lion kept pace with my car for a minute or so and then dropped back to a trot as I left him behind and sped up. The fourth sighting was several years ago as I was riding my bicycle around a local community college campus. I came upon a mountain lion crouched down, busily crunching on a severed deer leg. I was close enough to see that it was the hind leg of the deer. The lion looked at me but didn't move. I turned around and got out of there fast. So I think it's pretty weird to have so many up close sightings of a supposedly rare and elusive predator. Needless to say, I'm quite afraid of them and I never walk my dogs in the evening in my neighborhood or hike in parks or woods. I figure why tempt fate?

I think I am in an episode of the Twilight Zone. Recently when I signed on to GW there was a message explaining GW was expereincing problems. I just ignored it. Today I went back to the original post from which some of your messages were missing, well La-Ti-Da, the missing messages are now there.

My fruit trees are budding -- one of which still has leaves from last fall! -- and the forsythia are starting to bloom everywhere. The tulips are coming up now to join the other bulbs. My animals are shedding in earnest now, so they think spring is around the corner, too. If we're going to get nasty weather, I hope it's now before the pants take too much damage. And as much as I like the mild weather, so do many of the bugs that I'll spend the summer battling.

Sounds like you're getting sprouts from the rootstock. If you can take some photos of the sprouts and post them in your message, that would be helpful. If the sprouts are coming from the roots, this might mean the top of the tree - the scion - which is the variety that has been grafted to the rootstock may be suffering, so take some photos of the whole tree as well. And, if you can snap some pics of the orange, and include the underside if there's a navel, that is also helpful. Navels are in season now, so if you have ripe oranges with a navel, you have one of the navel varieties, most likely Parent Washington navel. You can upload your photos to Photobucket, then copy the HTML code of each photo (NOT the url, but the HTML code string), then paste that directly into your message body, and when you click "Preview", you should then see your photos embedded directly into your message. Much easier for us to answer you on the forum that way :-) Patty S.