PG&E makes solar customers go on a anual billing cycle and only credits me for solar production up to my usage.  For example if I were to hook  up my solar on January 1st 2009 and on January 1st 2010 my bill would look like this.  If I produced more solar than I used then my bill would be $0.00 and all that I over produced would NOT be credited to my next years bill or payed to me with a check from PG&E.  If I produced less than I used then my bill would be $##.## (at rate charges) for the power I used over what the Solar array made. They don't have to buy excess power from home solar arrays in eccess of the customers usage. California just recently passed legislation to make the power companies pay for excess power generation (grats btw on this, you've probably just halved you paytime with the passing of this).   But it's for this exact reason that I haven't gone solar.  Especially in a cloudier climate I have to over build my system to reach net 0, and in doing so for much of the year a system for my house would be producing an large over abundance of power which the power company then gets to sell to my neighbors on my dime.  Now I'm not against sharing by any means, but if I'm going to spend  tens of thousands of dollars on a system to run my house I deserve a cut of the profits of selling the excess power. Now personally I think by making possible for businesses and homeowners to make a profit on excess power would substainally decrease our reliance on fossil fuels.  After all if these home systems could turn a profit then finanicing for the homeowner from banks would be substanially easier.   If one really thinks about the government manking manditory for the power compainies to pay wholesale costs for excess power would save the government huge sums of money.  They could repeal the rebates and deductions and have large chunks of our nations energy produced by individuals and financed through banks, and then they could collect taxes on the money generated from the home producers. All that from just passing some legslation.  

You all know we've got a Sustainable Book Club Group. Please feel free to pick and rate them there.

 Yeah I'd agree with the above post.  Definately Blackberries in the first and last. You must battle them relentlessly to rid your yard of them in the PNW, though I've kept a couple and keep em pruned back, the berries are good as long you know they haven't been sprayed.  Any unwanted ones you gotta dig up as much of the root as can and tear them out.  Don't add any of it to your compost piles, because unless it's a very hot pile enough will most likely survive and apprecate it's new space when you go on to use the compost.  I dig and tear the fence line of my house every spring, any that survive after that I keep them cut back and unless it's one of the two growing over my fence in one corner of the yard that I freely pick from, I prune them back once they start to flower,  This helps cut down on the ones you gotta pull next year.   But it took me about 5 years of doing this to get some controll over them without sprays. The others are most likely Rhodies (though the nuts are kinda making me think it may be something else)..  They're another easy decoritive plant here in the Northwest.  Great blooms in the spring, though a bit of sticky mess to pick up after their flowers have dies off.  They can be tough to remove if you're so inclined beacuse they root themselves in pretty deep.  And if they've been there awhile, you can cut them back 100% and they'll simply start all over from scratch (I tried this once hopeing it'd kill it and a season of rot would make it easier to remove the stump). <edit> Btw  welcome to Portland.  Where ya gettin' yer chickens.

Weeding spades and a couple hoes do fine work on weeds around my house. Gardening in raised beds helps a lot since the soil is soft and just a pinch and pull brings them up easy.   I see no need for chemical weed control. Weeds are generally the result of certain soil conditions. And unless they are in my beds, I just let them go. Most of them usually take care of the soil problem that attracted them to the spot in a season or two. I let them go and mow them over when I mow or make sure to clip the flowers before they seed.   Who'm I to argue with Ma Nature, the more I garden the more I realize I'm just a small player in the game, and the more I give in(up), the better the results.

Same here, I keep getting new message update. Yet there is no new message (that I can see anyway). Also on a side note, I'm noticing that I have to re-login more than I use to when jumping from locations within the site. Notta a biggie, but just though you all might like to know.