Weeping water? - sap? - a sticky substance like thick corn syrup? If the latter and you soo nothing that looks like little cotton balls (mealy bug) then examine closely for scale. You almost have to rule out guttation as a possibility because hydathodes occur only on leaves. Another possibility is slime-flux (or bacterial wetwood). This disease is common in the Moracea family 0 particularly mulberry, but Ficus is a close relative. The most common symptom is oozing sap, which is called (surprise) ;o) "slime flux." CO2 from fermentation pushes sap from bark cracks or other wounds in the trunk or limbs. The sap can run down the trunk or drip from limbs, causing dark streaks that become gray or white when dry. It usually stinks as secondary microorganisms grow and feed on the oozing liquid. These wet regions don't appear rotten because decay fungi do not grow well on water-soaked wood. There is nothing curative of slime flux that I know of. Longevity of infected trees will depend on your ability to maintain good cultural conditions & growing with good vitality. Leaf loss is a normal physiological reaction to the marked decrease in light intensity indoor conditions usually bring when you bring your tree indoors. Al

gb - the flu has largely passed now -but I'm still more tired than usual. Randy is back to being pretty perky :-) Too bad about Skyler's surgery deferral! Getting psyched-up for something like that only to have it delayed to an indefinite time would be an additional element of stress that would not be welcome! All the shots etc. for the trip to Haiti would be pretty intimidating. My family doctor is there at the moment. He's associated with some childrens' hospital there and seems to spend a week or more there almost every month. There will be no issue of overlap between Phoebe's stay and Blue's - we just found out yesterday that Blue's owners won't be heading to their Mexico condo until January. Blue will be here fro Jan. 17-Feb. 28th. While I was under the weather recently, I finished a sweater for Randy. Given that the previous two I've made him took years(!) to finish, I decided that I needed to use heavy yarn and fat needles if I was going to be able to finish one in a reasonable time! So, in mid-September I bought Lopi wool and dug out my Nordic-style pattern books from years ago. It only took me 2 months to make this one - it used to only take a few weeks to make one of these, so I'm still slow but it's a big improvement from needing years to complete a sweater! Next up (maybe!) is a matching hat and socks (Randy loves hand-knit socks...) We've had an unusually mild October and so far this month. For the first time, there's been noticeable pink color on the heptacodium calyxes - but nowhere near as colorful as in the pictures Monique has posted of theirs.

My first surprise was when I woke up to my pond down about a foot. I filled it back up and let it set without the pump running (wasn't leaking from the liner) and it didn't go down any. I then dug up the line from the skimmer to the water fall and it wasn't leaking. After that I tore the waterfall apart and discovered the water was going behind the falls because the water fall tub was slightly crooked. After that was fixed (6 weeks later)my pond pump quit and I had to buy a new pump. Then the dreaded algae bloom. I fixed that by filling a tall waste basket with filter material with rock and marbles in the bottom to keep it from falling over (like the last time I did that.) My pond was looking mighty clear and I looked out and thought I was seeing the bottom. I noticed both pumps had stopped and went out to reset the breaker. To my surprise the water was gone except maybe 2"x2' and my fish were dying. Three koi and three gold fish already dead. I ran and got a 40 gal. pond and ran the rain barrel water in it and put slime coat, water conditioner and peroxide. I put eleven goldies in that. I held up my white goldie till it started to recover. I discovered something had removed the tubing going from the extra pump to the home made filter. I then scrubbed down the pond took (5 hr's) and rinsed it a couple of times. Put goldies back in that evening. My pump and water falls are working and I haven't lost any more fish. I loved my koi and hated to see them go but I only have a 1400 gal. pond so think I will stay with only the goldies. I have had my pond about 4 years and this is the first time I lost any fish. Today I was emptying a rain barrel and discovered a goldie in it. Named it Lucky. I put it in the aquarium with my fantails. I feel blessed to have 12 goldies. I have learned some lesson's I won't repeat. It's been over a week now and thing's are looking brighter. If I had only remembered what GW member said about "never set a pump on the bottom of a pond".

Nancy, It is just a sad fact of life that heat + lack of moisture give our hot peppers better flavor, and cooler temperatures and excessive moisture do just the opposite. There's not a lot we can do about it. I am careful to choose peppers that are higher on the Scoville Heat Unit scale for just this reason. While this sometimes means that hot peppers harvested in July and August in hot, dry years can be almost unbearably hot, it also means that those harvested in cooler, wetter months still have a lot of heat since I chose hotter varieties to begin with. I'll even tailor my variety choices to the year's expected weather (to the extent that you can know at seed-starting time what sort of summer to expect). If I expect really hot, dry summer, I may choose jalapenos with a lower SHU and do the opposite if I expect a cooler, wetter summer. It helps somewhat. Deer are just that way. They want what they want when they want it. You can jazz up ham and cheese sandwiches by spreading a thin layer of Habanero Gold Jelly on them! Of course, this only works if you happen to have Habanero Gold Jelly handy. Jen, Whatever your pepper is, I don't recognize it and it didn't come from me. Could it possibly me one of the ornamental pepper varieties? It stayed cool, cloudy and mostly rainy---just a slow, even rain that fell all day long until 4 or 5 pm---all day long and the high temperature here only made it up to 66 degrees. It felt like autumn after feeling like summer for far too long. We ended up with 5.8" of rain, so certainly cannot complain about the rain missing us this time. I think the last time we had 5.8" of rain from one rain event, even a multi-day rain event, likely was back in February. It is nice to see all the moisture, but I'm sure the mud and the puddles will get old quickly, and the mosquito explosion will not be welcome at all. We usually have mosquitoes all winter here, so it isn't like we even can count on cold weather to knock back the population completely. I dread the mosquito part of the equation. We'll see if this large amount of rainfall heals up all the cracks in the ground from this summer's drought. I think it will and hope I'm right about that. My garden is a lake as the timbers from each raised bed sort of serve as mini-dams that hold water when there is plentiful rainfall. A lake is probably preferable to a desert after the summer we just had. One lone hummingbird was spotted visiting the feeders in the rain, and then seen visiting the trumpet creeper flowers after the rain stopped. This is the third day in a row to spot only one hummingbird. I don't know if it is the same one, staying here and refueling before flying further south, or if I'm seeing various single ones. So far the last few days, all the hummingbirds I've seen have been ruby-throated ones. The main crowd left a few days ago. The deer returned in force to feed tonight and were pretty hungry. I hope they enjoyed their dinner. At least I didn't have to drag out the water hose to fill up their waterer for them because the rain took care of it---it was, in fact, overflowing. They might not even drink from the waterer now that all the creeks and ponds have water in them again, but it is there if they need it. I'm thinking if an unwanted large predator is lurking, we'll know it soon enough because it likely will leave tracks in the mud if it comes anywhere near the house, garden, outbuildings or the deer feeding area. Vultures have been circling our woodland and Tim thinks this means some predator has killed and possibly cached its prey back there. I pointed out anything could have happened---just some wild thing could have died of natural causes---and we'd still have vultures circling. Neither of us is willing to venture into the snake-infested woods to see if we can find whatever it is that is attracting the vultures. If this was November and we'd had colder nights, venturing into the woods wouldn't be so risky, but we've been too warm recently and the snakes are still very active. Dawn