Hi Botann of the Incredibly Beautiful Garden, I sure do hope the forest grows fast and well, roots and all. Trees die and I freak out. So expensive to shop, seek, buy, install, pamper, cut down, replace, etc. Have a douglas fir that croaked -- thought that was impossible in Portland. It got covered with humongous warts and turned brown. But hope is renewed! Hazel Smith sequoias, the very hardiest and outstandingly majestic, are available in HUGE sizes, extremely healthy and full, from Evans Farm down the street. Excellent prices too. More sequoias in the yard :-) Yes, if things live it will be a forest. It's hard to find Hazel Smiths and Evans Farm's this year are just luxuriantly robust. The south is where the wind comes from, neighbors to south have no trees so that's open. Also have a path running from south to north where the wind barrells through. Altogether too much burning sun here, desperately need more shade, doing quick forest succession thing, willows growing fast and starting to provide a little shade. Satellite communications? You lost me. No idea what that means. Fertilizing a leyland slows it down? Roots don't keep up with top? Maybe I'll have to prune them a lot. Maybe have to buy a cherry picker type rig, the size of a small riding lawnmower, to work amongst the treetops in a couple years. Whatever it takes ... Yes, I'm a beginner and I'm crazy, but I love trees and can't get enough, lust for more and more green always. Finally found some native western white pines, pinus monticola, from a Christmas tree grower, but have to wait until November for him to dig them for me. They used to cover the earth here but have been logged almost to extinction; even native nurseries don't have them. But they're incredibly beautiful.

Thanks everyone. We actually had colder weather the first couple of weeks in December (-18 F.) than we are having now, although we do have 1 and 1/2 feet of snow outside on the lawn. Mike, the few bucks of extra electricity to get plumeria to bloom in the middle of the winter is worth it! Between this and the light bulbs outside in my palm boxes, I figure it may cost me an extra $15.00 per month. Mike, regarding mites, what a chore! I must watch for mites carefully, every day. The lights are bright enough I can easily spot any. If I see just one mite crawling around, I spray the whole plant. So far, by doing this everyday, it has kept the mite population under control. My worst problem is waiting to water a plant now and then until it is too dry, and then it's oldest leaves will turn yellow and fall off, but the plants are doing very well. My seedlings that I started in July and August are now a foot tall, have robust trunks and large healthy leaves. I wouldn't be surprised if they bloom before one year old. Good luck with your plumeria, everyone!

LOL! I get to see the airport and hotelbut not even the office building, BP! Since 9-11 and bankruptcy, half our layovers are so short you need to decide if you want to eat or sleepwe usually celebrate when we get to do both! :-) Sometimes I walk out to a fast food place if theres one nearby, but thats about it on domestic layovers. But international layovers (because of legalities) are longer, so I have had some fun times on those. It also depends on if youre with a fun crew or not. Its not a whole lot of fun to be out walking around a strange city all alone. At least not for me! Ive gone out walking for hours twice in Frankfurt, and had dinner. The second FRA trip was my funnest one---was with a really fun bunch of girls. Got to go to the Great Wall, Tiananmen, and the Forbidden City in Beijingit was my first intl. tripand I didnt have a camera! That was fun, but it was over 100 degrees! Went for a nice walk and to the 100 yen shop in Osaka once. The place across from the hotel where we went to eat was in the World Trade Center! I kid you not! Did a hop-on-hop-off bus in London, which included a short boat ride down the Thamesto the Tower of London--and have a picture of me in front of Buckingham Palace. That was fun! And had dinner in Paris when I was still in trainingbut I dont like Paris or Parisiens! Also went out walking there, so have seen the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, and walked over one of the bridges to the "left bank!" And Ive been thru the (very short) tunnel where Princess Diana was killed on the way to the hotel. We took the subway a couple times in Paris, and I couldnt believe it! We let the first couple trains go by because they were so full we didnt think we could get in, and finally realized if we didnt just push in, we were gonna be there forever, so we pushed in with everybody else, and youhonestlydidnt need to even try to hang onto anything. We were body-to-body wedged in-between the people and couldnt have fallen over if we had tried! The only thing I hung onto was my purse! When I get to Honolulu or Kona, I usually go out walking for a whileby myself. In Kona Ive walked thru the oldest church in the islandsbut mostly just take a walk along the beach and thru all the little shops, and the same thing in HNL. The hotel is just a couple blocks from the International Market Place, so I usually spend an hour or so roaming around in there. Im not a big fan of humidity, so people will think Im nuts, but it can really be stifling over there. And I had a fun time on my first trip to Anchoragewhich is also considered intl. for us because its over water. It was December and there was 4 hours of daylitemore than I was expectingand I walked down to the Anchorage Museum which has a VERY interesting exhibit documenting Alaska from before the dawn of man to the present. Really, really interesting, and I highly recommend it if anybodys ever up there. The spooky thing when youre there, tho, is that we stay right downtown (tiny downtown!) on Fifth Street which is where something akin to a crack in the earth opened up during the 8.+ earthquake of 1964, and 4th and 5th Streets were offset by several feet when it was over with. And the tourist channel at the hotel tells all about it, complete with pictures, just so you dont forget about it! About the only other thing Ive really ever done is, on the one Manhattan layover Ive had since 9-11, I and 3 other girls went down to ground zero. The public viewing platform was still up, and I cant begin to explain the impact it had on us all to be there. Then we went to a little sidewalk café a few blocks away and had drinks! The ride down and back to the hotel on the subway was something else tho! We were lost both ways! And going back to the hotel we were half drunk too, and acting TOTALLY insane (comic relief), so we were entertaining all the New Yawkers on the subway! When flight attendants get to goofing off, we often get into our evacuation commands, so, since we were lost, we were going, "grab your ankles," "come this way," "jump, jump!" I dont know what people thot we were doing, but we were all laughing so hard we were crying, and Im kinda surprised we didnt all get locked up that time! On the other hand, there are a lot of nutty people in NYC! But I am glad I got a chance to go to ground zeroand I DO have pictures of thatand of us acting goofy on the subway! Thats allin 7 years! Otherwise its just straight to the hotel, sleep for 4 or 5 hours, and get up at 0200 to get back to whatever airport. It is DEFINITELY not the relaxed, romantic image most people probably have. The part I really like about the job is being in an airplane (I should have been born with wings)and helping people! :-) Skybird

dedtired: In your post, you wrote "Today I am making a new mushroom soup recipe in the slow cooker." If it turns out good, would you post the recipe? Thanks. Since I'm retired, I too try to stay home on the weekends. And I try to not run errands or go out to lunch at noon. It's hard enough for work people to go through a line or find a table at 'lunchtime', so I don't want them to have to wait on me when I can go earlier/later. Shirley