Drying (up of) bottom leaves can mean a lot of different things. Often, it's just natural senescence. First, to remedy the excess water in your pots, you can use a wick to drain them and/or take the pots to the sink, hold them at eye level, move them downward quickly, then very smartly reverse their direction upward. This uses Newtons first law of motion to force water from the pot. When the water in the soil is moving downward, it tends to 'want' to keep moving. When you reverse the pot's direction upward, the downward-moving water in the soil keeps moving downward and out of the pot. Everyone (almost) thinks that adding peastone or similar improves drainage and aeration, when in fact it has very little impact on either. It also has an insignificant impact on the ht of the perched water table (PWT), which is an extremely important consideration when you're growing in shallow containers, as many bonsai pots are. To illustrate, picture a quart jar half full of sand or pudding (S/P). Start adding BBs or marbles to the S/P. Can you see in your mind's eye how the fine particles simply fill in around the BBs/marbles and how they have no impact on the soils drainage, aeration, or PWT? It's only when the BBs/marbles become a very large fraction of the whole that you start to see any notable improvement in drainage, aeration, and ht of the PWT. In order for you to realize an improvement, your soil needs to be based on a significant % of larger particles than I'm guessing were in the packaged soil you used. Again, this is especially critical when growing in shallow containers, which are much more difficult to grow in than deeper containers. If you're using a soil that supports 2" of perched water and are trying to grow in saucers or other shallow containers like these, After you water, most or ALL of the soil will be entirely saturated, which you already recognize is not a favorable condition. Al

Hi Moni! You have my sympathy. Whenever we visited DH's family in Pennsylvania, I never took the right clothing and was always freezing cold, even in July. More rain didn't fall, but it stayed cool, cloudy and misty. There's a tornado watch to our southwest, so I guess if that storm develops further and moves our way, we still might get a little more rain. We were in Dallas most of the day and drove home through a lot of rain but that rain stopped before we reached the Red River. Caroline, The maple is gorgeous. You have better color there than we have here this year. I hope the rain helped your pastures and ponds. Our pastures are still so dry and our ponds remain empty but eventually enough rain has to fall to start refilling them. A neighbor of ours who has a spring-fed pond says it is the lowest she has seen it in the 15 years or so that she's owned the place, and worries her spring may be on the verge of drying up. Lisa, I bet the rain was wonderful for the flowers you planted. Almost all my stuff froze on the night we went down to 25 degrees a couple of weeks ago, but the brugmansias in containers are still blooming. One of them, and I think it is Lemonade Twist, has 6 or 8 flowers open right now and another couple of dozen about to open. I am going to have to carry it inside before the weekend freeze, but it has handled a lot of cold weather already. We didn't get a lot more rain, but also didn't have any grassfires today....which is a change. I think there were grassfires every day last week. Of course, the dormant grasses will dry out quickly unless it rains again soon. Still, any rain is a good thing and this rain was a fairly slow soaking rain so the ground is not quite hard-as-a-rock now. Dawn

Lots of thoughts today. Speaking of rain, we were planning to go to Bar Harbor, ME, this weekend, but since our main purpose was to explore Acadia and it's closed, we just cancelled our hotel and instead are going to NYC. Now I checked the weather forecast for NY and it looks pretty lousy...well, 30% chance of rain, better than 100%. DH wonders if someone is telling us something and we should just stay home? But I know he'd be mopey all weekend if we did. He was more excited about Acadia than the rest of us were, because he is obsessed with his camera. Meanwhile, DS surprised me last night by saying a local university has moved into the "favorites" on his college list (he is a senior, working on early action apps this month). So he now has 3 favorites, one 5 hours away and 2 very close to home. I suspect he is setting himself up to stay close to home, because he is that kind of kid, but he won't ever admit it out loud! DH and I would be thrilled if he stayed close, but we're playing it very cool and actually have been almost pushing the far-away school. For anyone wondering: Syracuse, Northeastern, and Boston University. Unfortunately only NU has early action, so he'll have to wait quite a while to find out about the others. (He's applying EA to 3 others, too.) Finally, I have been working very part time as a decorator for several years. I don't advertise and all work has been via word of mouth, or from people who read my monthly column in our local newspaper. Business has been very erratic but that's fine with me. I enjoy being busy but also enjoy down time. Over the summer I thought gee, maybe I should pack it in and get a "regular" job with stable hours. OTOH, I like making my own schedule, taking most of the summer off, and being my own boss. So I was in a quandary. Well, as of the end of August, I have been CRAZY busy. Like never before. I have been laughing, thinking as the third new client called me within a week, am I being punked or what? I guess word has just gotten around. Who knows, but even though it's been a bit overwhelming, I'm loving it. It sounds silly, but I've noticed I have a bit of a spring in my step and in general just feeling more productive feels good. My kids need me less than ever (and one moved out over the summer) so the timing is good, too. At the moment, I think I have 6 or 7 projects at various stages. Finally. The whole wheat bread I made in my bread machine last night tastes like cardboard.

Just made my own. Trader Joe's Tomato and Roasted Red Bell Pepper soup that I always keep on hand in my pantry. Unfortunately, the "grilled cheese" on my homemade oat tortilla just didn't have that same awesome, old fashion cheese flavor that it would have with 2 slices of "regular" bread.