A sunset at Conifer Kingdom, featuring (from left to right): Tsuga mertensiana, Pinus strobus 'Bennett Clumpleaf', and Picea orientalis. -Sam

Jay, What new planting mix are you using? I want to hear about it! This year I'll be planting deep too since my soil moisture levels down deep are good, but soil moisture levels higher up are not good. I'll have to water deeply to make it work and with clay that's not always easy. That's terrible news about the fire near Santanta, KS. I hope everyone evacuates safely and that the firefighters can do their job in a safe and effective manner. With the winds today, I've felt like it was a matter of time before someone had a big fire somewhere. The sky here looks disgusting. For a while, it was a sort of a red dusty look like you get with dust storms blowing in from west Texas. Then, a couple of hours ago it started looking more like grayish-white fog or smoke from somewhere. Now it is yellow and a heavy layer of pollen is settling on the vehicles. We're going to have a whole rainbow of colors in the sky tonight and tomorrow. At least most of us here on this forum will not be endangered by the severe weather expected tonight and tomorrow. Dr. Forbes on The Weather Channel seems deeply concerned about the potential for very severe weather from all this mess, but it should start north and east of most of us. This morning, they interviewed a Storm Chaser guy in Sherman, TX, and asked where he and his bunch were headed today and he said Coffeyville, KS. He said once they got there, they'd check the latest weather data and head for wherever they thought the action would be. Around here, when we have the potential for severe weather that includes tornadoes, I just watch for the storm chaser vehicles. When those vehicles are driving up my road, that's when I head for the fraidy hole. Last year, Chris was out storm spotting with other firefighters and law enforcement officers and they ran into some storm chasers about a quarter-mile to a half-mile from our house. I heard them mention that on the radio and I headed for the cellar. About fifteen minutes later, the tornado touched down at the Red River near us and hop-scotched its way across the county, but didn't do any real damage. I don't really have to watch the local weather radar---I just watch for the storm chasers and that's all the warning I need. Dawn

PJ and Jacquelyn, many of the thoughts you have expressed occur to me too. I really posted the article only because it had fresh science findings in it, at least, findings I had not read anywhere else before. I have become a little burned out about the seemingly incessant and obsessive weaving of every scientific finding about meteorology into the getting to be suffocating fabric of global warming thoughts. I think we're all gonna die from the energy wasted on re-discovering over and over what we cannot control, before we die from the uncontrollable itself. The clincher for me was a few months back, when I read (or saw on TV) a report about some current in the Atlantic Ocean. Supposedly, if that current changes in some way, the planet could be in for another Ice Age. Fear of that change in that current is driven by observations that are interpreted to conclusions that - guess what? - global warming is what's changing the current. Get it? No matter what happens to the planet's climate - even an Ice Age - it's because of global warming. It's like, if you want to be Chicken Little about global warming, the deck is stacked; you can't go wrong. Then the blame game and the my science is more solid than your science food fights get going. Then the policy wonks, with all their science-backed, correct prescriptions for all the drastic behavioral changes that humans - especially Americans - "should" be making, that lead to all the unintended consequences that no scientists can foresee (because they could not possibly gather enough data), out-shout everyone in every discussion until you pray that some heat wave or Ice Age could just shut them up (or make them keep to themselves) and make them just leave the rest of us be, baked or frozen. I need to go out and run our noisy gasoline-powered mower, before the neighborhood lawn inspectors park their 4-ton SUV out front and idle it for 5 minutes while making notes about how our grass is too tall, for a "nastygram" to be produced using all the kilowatt hours it'll take to get one of those written and mailed to us. I'm not hyperventilating or raving mad, just venting like I need to now and then about life's absurdities. It's probably global warming that's making me short tempered and causing a snowball effect of additional CO2 dumping into the air. I just saw an article today about the unusual snowfall in South Africa...of course we know why that happened! Forget the lawn, it's Margarita Time!

I have read all of the Wilderness books as well as the Outlander series. I enjoyed both but much prefer the Outlander books. They seem to have a more natural flow to them. I like that they stay with the same main characters through all the books. Sarah keeps the same characters but changes main character in the later books. The historical references in both are good but I think Diana's are much better.