Computer problems last week put me out of touch. I was able to use my Internet connection to watch Instant View Netflix movies on my TV using the Wii, so I did that instead of visiting with all of you.

I still have some computer problems, but am stealing this quick moment to say hello, hold the door, I'm coming back in soon.

Saturday I went to a Tree Symposium - all you'd want to know about trees in our area. The main topic of course is to educate people about the Mountain Pine Beetle blight that is moving into this area. The town govt people think that 50 to 60% of our pine trees are going to die from it. Our only hope is to have the trees around our houses sprayed annually, and there are no guarantees. Fortunately, we have a diverse forest on our property with fir and spruce trees mixed in with the pines, but if the pines die we will have to cut them down and deal with all that wood. Anyhow, we'll face it when it happens, and in the meantime address the one or two dead trees that show up each summer.

The Colorado state tree is the Colorado Blue Spruce. It is also Utah's state tree, but of course they don't call it the Colorado Blue. Anyhow, the biggest specimen of a blue spruce is in Utah, nearly 5 feet in diameter. Colorado would like to have the champion tree bragging rights, so the foresters have a campaign called "Bringing Home the Blue" with a $500 prize to whomever finds a bigger tree in Colorado.

Evergreens get their color from their individual DNA, so if a person had their heart set on a really blue-looking spruce for the front yard, they would want to get a grafted tree with known blue color characteristics. Here is a row of non-grafted spruce planted as tiny seedlings about 35 years ago. It is hard to tell what color a tree is going to be at the seedling stage, and they were purchased in lots of 100 from the university, so I think my parents were lucky to have this grouping come out looking like the colors were planned.