First off, I am a weather fanatic, I've been closely following weather since I was younger and with more zeal then ever now that I have become a gardener. I find it fascinating and even do some amatuer storm chasing. Second, I do believe there is a climate change underway and I strongly feel humankind is to blame for most of that - but this is for another post or probably another forum alltogether. Next, I do water in the morning, in fact right now I am watering hard as another day in the low 80s is expected here - quite unusual again for this time of the year here. I rarely water during the heat of the day for a variety of reasons, but one of the biggest is that I do a lot of hand-watering with watering cans and too much heat can make it a pretty exhaustive venture. I guess the real subject of this post should have been more like: "For those with brand-new(less then a year established) pots of conifers, do you water them during the spring/summer/fall months once a week or four times a week, or what? I have a fairly sandy, fast-draining soil, so I am tempted to water twice a week or more during hot dry spells but I was curious what schedules other conifer enthusiasts stuck to. Love to hear from you, Will

The best thing I've found to cook on is my Coleman single burner camp stove. Tried a variety of other things, portable ranges, a terrible whirlpool stove-top from many years ago, but you just cant beat that camp stove. The thing is basically a single burner that sits atop a green propane cylinder. Its only 10,000 BTU's, so it wont burn your pot up if you use it correctly and it uses about half of that bottle for a really long canning job. Ive done two canning jobs now and the thing runs perfectly for regulating the pressure. You just place your canner on it on a level surface, load it up, open and light it, set it to a decent flame and get your head of steam up. Once you have vented out the air and have the steam coming out for about ten minutes, place on your weights and let it pressurize. Once you reach operating pressure, lower the flame a to a reasonable level keeping the weights rocking and let it go until done. One word of caution though. Make sure you use the little stand that the bottle sits in to give your stove a good wide base, and don't let children bump into this. As long as its centered and you don't kick it or something, it will stay there with no problems. You can get a stove like this at any wally world :) If you don't like the height of the thing, Ozark Trail makes a two burner camp stove with two 6000BTU burners on it that sits flat and low. It's in the ballpark of 28 bucks. It takes longer to heat obviously, but you cant beat a gas flame for heat regulation. That's just my 2 cents. I'm sure everybody has their favorite way of heating PC's, but for me a gas flame does the best. I hope this helped, and don't be afraid of your equipment. There's nothing really fancy about it, Just get to know it and go to town. Just set up your gear and follow the recipe timetables and pressures.

Thanks Greg/Alex!(-: jos- Korean waggies are said to be like the true Japanese Waggies, very stout with very tight formation-we'll see. Ken- here's picture of the Abyssinian when I planted it 6-6-09 In Aug-(30th) of 09 9-7-10 -it get's lifted and put in the basement,stored like a Canna,EE-hopefully to fight another year! Frank the Tank! The Castors have been flowering for a few months,I think yours should have time to seed but it's not hard to get seeds. houstonpat- I bought mine from a seller on e-bay,they are wicked expensive! There is one for sale(presumably Princeps)at a great price but check out the shipping. If you are serious about getting one,I can send you the e-mail of the guy I went through(-: Looking good Mike-you da man! I just ordered a bunch more Takil,that I will hold on to!- also some Geminisectus and Oreophilus(-: What can I say? The bug bites hard!

Interesting note about the rocks. Here is a picture of ours: When we saw them being built, they were a lot bigger than we thought they'd be and worried about the same thing you mention since we have a lot of little ones in our pool. We debated about handholds. In retrospect, since our boulders were man-made, we would have had them build in some creative outcroppings that could work as hand-holds. Since we didn't, we now have a pool rope with some floats anchored at each end of the rocks that we can take in and out easily. we tend to leave it in because it doesn't look bad and the kids like playing with it. Just as a note, any children that NEED the rope should obviously be very closely watched anyways, but we feel better with the rope in too. Cleaning around them hasn't been a hassle at all, I just walk on them. Our cleaner connection is below them, which is a little inconvenient but not that big a deal. All in all, we love the rocks. I also agree that my wife made me cringe a few times when she she went out to bug the subs about something she didn't like, but it always worked out for the best. You'll always see what's going on faster than your builder unless he moves in with you.