Engadye, Sorry to see your coconut tree struggling. For the past few years, I've been stringing Christmas lights around mine. I also used a vinyl table cloth with flannel back to wrap around it whenever the temperature dropped further down. Your idea of wrapping it around with a comforter might have worked for you in the past. Don't give up on it too quickly yet. Mine is also looking not too good now ... Hope the weather will warm up for us soon and our coconut trees will all survive.

I got a reference to "The Omega Diet" book from another source and had purchased it and have read first part. Thought it was an interesting coincidence that it is also recommended here. It is a pretty impressive nutrition book. It seems to say a lot of what we have already heard but it really gives explanations. One of the controversial things in the book is that it is definitely against a "low fat diet" per se. There are even statistics that are given indicating that low-fat can actually be harmful. The key is what kind of fat which most of you have already heard, right? Anyway, if you haven't, the book gives a good case for using Canola oil for cooking and Olive oil to a lesser extent. Using flaxseed oil on salads (because can't tolerate heat) is good because flaxseed has a huge amount of Omega 3. One main recommendation is fish, fish and more fish. Seems the men on Crete eat a lot more fish than even most on a standard Mediterranean diet. Their records of heart disease seem very incredible. Recommends fish oil capsules if you don't like fish. Funny, but I've lost 32 pounds since January and one of my tricks has been to eat walnuts as a snack if I'm hungry between meals. I didn't even know it was high in Omega 3. The key for me is that the walnuts help to satisfy my hunger with a small amount. And I'm one of those people who can't stop eating until everything in front of me is gone. The walnuts seem to change that. The omega diet book doesn't seem to have much to say about coconut oil. There are a lot of recipes. Seems like one of the premises is to eat meat and vegetables and try to limit grains. Kind of low-carb to some extent except, as I mention above, it recommends that you avoid like the plague fats high in omega 6 such as most vegetable oils (i.e. corn, safflower). There have been animal studies with Omega 3 and Omega 6 oils. Seems that cancerous tumors (such as breast), grow rapidly when animal is eating Omega 6 but turmor growth is stalled when animal is eating omega 3. Will we even really know what is the best way to eat ? :) --Alice

We sold coconut oil from NOW foods while I was still married to the ex. He still carries it, it's $5.99 for a 12 oz. bottle. It's more expensive than butter, and certainly more expensive than shortening, but not more expensive than walnut oil or hazelnut oil or even good olive oil and it's much healthier for your heart, IMO, than butter. They all have about the same amount of fat and calories, but all fats are not created equally in a nutritional sense. Ashley likes apples sauteed in a bit of coconut oil in lieu of butter, and says they don't need as much sugar either, because the coconut oil adds some flavor of its own. I use it in some baked goods, but find that things like shortbread are somewhat the worse in taste and texture for the substitution. Of course, I make shortbread about twice a year, so it's an occasional splurge anyway. It's all a matter of what you like, and I find that I have to experiment and try things to determine whether its a good sub for certain other fats. I can also say that I'm in my 50s and have extremely low blood pressure, my glucose levels are excellent and the only reason I have high cholesterol is my genetics, it's an inherited trait from my mother's side and has nothing to do with my diet. I eat sugar when I like (Michigan beet sugar, grown and made locally), butter in moderation, use regular old flour off the shelf. However, I grow my own organic garden, my own grass fed beef, my own free range chickens and eggs and then I can and preserve those things myself. I try to avoid the hydrogenated fats and remember what my old doc told me: "If it wasn't a food 50 years ago, it's not a food today". Of course, he also told me that if you're over 40 and you get up in the morning and nothing hurts, you've died in your sleep. In spite of that, I have no discernable aches and pains and can still do a cartwheel on Makayla's lawn, spend 10 hours digging post holes without giving out and outrun the grandkids, so I must be doing SOMETHING right. Annie

That's a beautiful specimen! I've had my mango tree less than two years and had never even seen one before I got it, since they don't grow in my area without a whole lot of work (temp-regulated auto-on/off old Christmas lights, multiple layer frost covers at night) so I'm new to this. But in my experience so far, the upper leaves are the most susceptible to cold damage and that's what that one brown spot looks very much like. Conversely, a Christmas light bulb directly touching it could scorch it, too, but that seems far less likely in your case.