Hurricane Season is Coming....Preparation is Key to Survival

"History teaches that a lack of hurricane awareness and preparation are common threads among all major hurricane disasters. By knowing your vulnerability and what actions you should take, you can reduce the effects of a hurricane disaster. This year Hurricane Preparedness Week is May 21-27, 2006.
The goal of this Hurricane Preparedness Web site is to inform the public about the hurricane hazards and provide knowledge which can be used to take ACTION. This information can be used to save lives at work, home, while on the road, or on the water....."

Click title to visit the hurricane preparedness web site.

CYOUINCOURT007: It's time to review/make disaster plans,inventory assets and aquire additional supplies,review/establish a safe room (in case of structure breach/destruction).....overall, get thinking and acting upon all these issues now, before the threat looms.....don't wait or depend upon the feds....in any event, it will take days for them to assess and act...your safety and security will be in your own hands......

You might be a Palmaholic if.....

You've ever searched through a local nursery's trash dumpster to get discarded plastic pots.
You've ever had someone keep an eye out for security while you harvested seeds.
You've ever had to park your vehicle outside during the winter to make room in the garage for your palm trees.
The highlight of your day is coming home to check and see if any of your seeds have sprouted.
You've ever folded a piece of notebook paper or junk mail to make a makeshift envelope to hold seeds.
You find yourself standing psychotically in your front yard at 3 AM stareing at your latest emerging royal palm frond.
You've ran over several pedestrians at your first glimpse of Echo or MacArthur Park flora.
When your 5, 4, and 3 year old can enthusiastically identify all of the 45 different palms in the yard.
You carry around a bucket of seeds and toss them randomly in to the bushes of the freeway.
You get abusive and homicidal thoughts when some one says "I don't really care for palm trees".
You go NUTS in Northern California when you think how tropical it could look, and they can grow MANY palms, but they choose to have the deciduous "oregon/temperate" look.
You almost lose conscieness when a friend (true story) visiting from Boston says, "Oh, there are types of palms? I thought there was just one, a "palm".
You seriously eye those large pygmie dates around the closed down bank branch and entertain thoughts of 3 AM raids.
When you return on a flight from back east to Los Angeles, getting a total rush hearing the passengers say "Wow, look at the palm trees.
You've ever pulled the sheets off your bed in winter to wrap your favorite palm.
You've ever leveled your home to make more room to plant palms.
If you've ever cruised ghetto neighborhoods because you think you remember there being a nice palm there.
You're 20 years old and obsessed with palms.
You almost have fender benders because you are craning your neck to see what kind of palm you just passed.
You throw a fit when your neighbors trim too many live fronds off of their palms.
You get angry when the hardiness of certain palms is questioned in your growing zone.
You get mad when your foolish neighbors insist on planting butia capitata while there are tons of nicer looking species hardy in your area.
You take a summer job at a delivery place just because it will allow you to cruise neighborhoods and spot nice palms.
You use palms as landmarks when giving directions. (leading to much confusion) "Turn left at the corner with the large phoenix reclinata".... "What are you talking about?!"
You put your potted palms in the garage instead of your car when a hurricane's coming. (true story)
Your family rolls their eyes at you when refer to your palms by their botanical names.
You get irritated at where the lines are drawn on the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map.
The first thing you do when you get home is to check your palms to see how much they have grown.
Can't wait to get home to see if your palm order has arrived.
The second thing you do when you get home is get on the internet and check out the palm board.
Spend more time with your palms, than you do with your wife.
Your wife ask you what is more important "her or the palms " and you can't answerbecause you know the truth will mean cooking your own dinner and you promised never to lie to her.
You go to visit a fellow palm nut and you spend an hour in his backyard and have drank three of his beers before he realises you are there.
When you give directions to your house by telling people to just look for the house surrounded by palms.
You feel you've wasted money taking your girlfriend out to dinner that could have been spent buying another plam to add to the hundreds you've already got.
You watch a TV program or film, set in some exotic location and find you're perving at the palms instead of the girls.
You only take your family on holiday to locations where there are palms and you coincide the holiday with seed harvesting time.
While watching rented videos you constantly rewind the tape to confirm the identity of a palm in the background shot of the scene.
You've ever accidentally voiced the specie of a palm tree in a movie theater loud enough for others to hear.
You take a Palm Tree identifier book with you on vacation.
Your neighbors start placing toy monkeys around the yard.
You offer palms (free) to your neighbors when they are landscaping.
You put off taking a summer vacation and convince your wife the money is better spent on palms.
You argue with your neighbors about the identity of a palm in their yard.
You yell and shout obscenities at the 5 year old who just removed a seedling from the front yard [poor kid thought it was a weed].
You insist to your spouse that the "neglected" howea you "found" late one evening in the 15 ga. container was closer to the dumpster in the industrial complex than to the entrance of the business.
According to your spouse, and deep down you know she might have a valid argument, your back yard is overcrowded with too many palms, but you're certain a new ravenea will sit fine in the 2 ft. wide section of earth between the concrete and backyard wall.
When your spouse examines the back yard, she asks about the new palm behind the shrub, and you insist it's a volunteer Wodytia.
You consider what kind of job it will be when time comes to cut a section of concrete in the profile of the encroaching trunk to relieve the stress on the patio.
You reluctantly give your next door neighbor a 15 gal. blue palm when you come to grips with the realization that the balance of blues in your yard is overshadowing the others, but rather than selling it, you'd rather have it close to home so you can still visit it from time to time and see it progress in life.
You begin to examine your character when reading the alleged possible symptoms related in this section, and you can answer "yes" to almost all of the above.
You go to cut the grass, then realize with a start that there is no grass, because there is no room, because all available space is taken by palms............
Click title for link....Courtesy of PalmTreeParadise

This is why Hubble and NASA are the shiat

Spiral Galaxies in Collision Credit: Debra Meloy Elmegreen (Vassar College) et al., & the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/ STScI/ NASA)
Explanation: Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars. Astronomers predict that NGC 2207, the larger galaxy on the left, will eventually incorporate IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the right. In the most recent encounter that peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging around counter-clockwise, and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in them usually do not collide.

Click title for link..Click pic for high res...........

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Galaxy Wars: M81 versus M82 Credit & Copyright: Johannes Schedler (Panther Observatory)
Explanation: In this stunning cosmic vista, galaxy M81 is on the left surrounded by blue spiral arms. On the right marked by massive gas and dust clouds, is M82. These two mammoth galaxies have been locked in gravitational combat for the past billion years. The gravity from each galaxy dramatically affects the other during each hundred million-year pass. Last go-round, M82's gravity likely raised density waves rippling around M81, resulting in the richness of M81's spiral arms. But M81 left M82 with violent star forming regions and colliding gas clouds so energetic the galaxy glows in X-rays. In a few billion years only one galaxy will remain.

Click title for link..Click pic for high res...........

Astronomy Picture of the Day

The Crown of the Sun

Credit & Copyright: Koen van Gorp
Explanation: During a total solar eclipse, the Sun's extensive outer atmosphere or corona is an awesome and inspirational sight. The subtle shades and shimmering features of the corona that engage the eye span a brightness range of over 10,000 to 1, making them notoriously difficult to capture in a single picture. But this composite of 33 digital images ranging in exposure time from 1/8000 to 1/5 second comes very close to revealing the crown of the Sun in all its glory. The telescopic views were recorded from Side, Turkey during the March 29 solar eclipse, a geocentric celestial event that was widely seen under nearly ideal conditions. The composite also captures a pinkish prominence extending just beyond the upper edge of the eclipsed sun.

Lil-Buddy-N-Me.......

Anyone out there into landscaping,gardening,orchids,palms,plants in general?.......Soon I shall take a pic of my nursery and post it up for insiders like you to see : )