We went to the movies last night and I packed myself some carrot stick and hummus and a big bottle of water, instead of splurging on a bucket of popcorn and diet soda. You know what, I didn't even miss it. But I will admit to buying a package of peanut M&Ms, but I only had them after the carrots, and I only had 10. :-) I'm still hovering around 27 lbs of weight loss. Still working on the last few pounds. I fell off the exercise bandwagon last week, but I going to get back on it this week.

http://www.weightwatchers.com/plan/www/jnl.aspx Thats the only one ive seen around doing that. Good luck JD

Hi Bart: Fantastic idea you have !! I agree: I would put cracked corn below the bark-chips, to prevent birds & animals from digging that up. Then I put wood-ash on-top last. To prevent cracked corn from sprouting, put bagged cracked corn in your freezer for 1 week before using. Hubby bought me a large bag of cracked corn last fall, and it stored in my cold garage (below freezing) for 3 months. In the spring I used it, and zero corn sprouting. However, the new bag of cracked corn bought in spring: it sprouted corn-plants all over !! Wood-ash is very good for roses. My Mom used that for 30 years and I had never seen fungal growth on her roses: no mildew, no black spots, no rust. She had a 5-acre garden and never water her roses. I re-post the composition of red-lava rock compared to wood-ash, and you'll see wood-ash is far superior in anti-fungal agents: pH of woodash is 10.4 compared to pH of 9.9 for limestone, and pH of 8.2 for red-lava-rock. Woodash has 20% calcium, plus high in potassium, zinc, and boron. Woodash is most effective since it's faster release, due to smaller particles. Below values are in p.p.m (parts per million, as in water contains 1 ppm of fluoride). Wood Ash Calcium 15 Potassium 2.6 Aluminum 1.6 Magnesium 1.0 Iron 0.84 Phosphorus 0.53 Manganese 0.41 Sodium 0.19 Nitrogen 0.15 Microelements Concentration in mg/kg for Wood Ash Arsenic 6 Boron 123 Cadmium 3 Chromium 57 Copper 70 Lead 65 Mercury 1.9 Molybdenum 19 Nickel 20 Selenium 0.9 Zinc 233 CaCO3 (calcium carbonate equivalent 43% (woodash) 100% for limestone) Let's compared wood ash to red-lava-rock, has less zinc than wood-ash. Zinc, copper, calcium, boron plus potassium are anti-fungal agents. For red lava rock, in p.p.m, it has 6 phosphorus, 59 potassium (way-more than wood-ash), but only 6 in zinc. Red-lava-rock advantage is high iron at 10, copper at 5 (compared to 70 for wood ash), magnesium of 2, and boron of 10 (compared to 123 for wood ash). The highest compositions in red-lava-rock are: calcium at 1.3 mg/100, manganese at 0.6, and sodium at 0.5 mg/100. For anti-fungal agents, wood ash is number one. For potassium and iron, red-lava rock excels. Below are my 1st-year gallon-size, own-root Austin roses planted in topsoil which has peatmoss (pH 4) to balance out wood ash (pH 10.4). Lots of blooms, and no black spots nor rust for years afterwards. But notice just a touch of mildew, since I topped that with salty horse manure, plus salty high nitrogen-chemicall, plus sulfur. I stopped those foolish experiments and mildew went away ... they are clean for the past 4 years. Picture taken at above 80 degree in hot & dry summer:

Canada has major energy sources, read "oil", and a major portion of it of the kind that needs major processing, thus raw price is low and we have suffered from having only one potential market for much of it, located as it is far inland ... and when the U.S. buyers knew that they had no competition, were unwilling to pay usual market price. It's sourced in three of our ten provinces. We also produce a number of other resources, most of them mined, and the prices of copper, zinc, gold, nickel, etc. have been in the toilet for a while ... and by the looks of things, China's large recent market is in trouble, as well, so doubt that there'll be improvement for a while. We also produce various qualities of coal, and much of that is in disfavour due to it being such a polluter - the province in which Jasdip, ont gal, cherry fizz, dances in garden, eccentric and some others of us live shut down their last coal-fired electrical generators a while ago. Remember when they said that, with the machines producing so much more of the stuff, that we'd be working two days a week and have five in which we could have glorious fun? Did you ever hear any of the enthusiasts mention that, working two days week ... we'd be paid for only two days a week? How to live on that, unless in a cave? ole joyful