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\"They provide incredible activities for these kids,\" [Adam Greenhood] said. \"They partnered with Ski Swap as of last year; Ski Swap is a huge fundraiser. With almost no budget we made the cheapest TV spot I've ever made. It was just static, just snow for 15 seconds, and the titles come up, 'Love snow? Ski Swap and Snow Show is coming,' and dates and times. This year, with our help, they doubled their take. They raised $50,000 last year; this year they raised $100,000.\" \"CBS, ABC, NBC -- 20 years ago if you had a spot in the news, you had reached 100 percent of the American public in a week,\" McCallum said. \"Those days are gone and won't come back. So it's my job to make sure that the message reaches the right people for the right amount of time. Adam's job is to make sure that it's the right message.\" JIM THOMPSON/JOURNAL ABOVE: The upstairs workspace at Esparza Advertising in downtown Albuquerque ; LEFT: Esparza Advertising account executive Vicki Lee Newsom works with clients in a small conference room that used to be the main vault of a former bank on the site ; TOP: Esparza Advertising's entryway greets visitors with the question, \"Are you ready for something different?\"; ABOVE: LEFT: Esparza Advertising's brain trust sits in the office of creative director Adam Greenhood: from left, director of accounts [Tiffany Hobson], Greenhood, media director Karen S McCallum and president [Del Esparza] ABOVE RIGHT: Esparza Advertising won seven Telly Awards in 2006, three of which are seen here

The only thing still producing reliably is the Stupice tomato plant we tried for the first time this year. It isn't setting new fruit, the nights are too cool now, but the fruit it set earlier keeps ripening despite the cool nights. The fruit is small, bigger than a cherry tomato but not as large as a slicing tomato, and quite flavorful. Best of all, it's a tough little plant that just keeps producing through wind and dry weather and neglect, and it seems to be fairly disease resistant. My experiment using mint plants to repel squash bugs didn't work. Eventually the nasty beasts found the squash plants, although not as soon as they have in the past. We did get a few squash, but not many. The search goes on for a practical way to evade squash bug attack. Acorn, vegetable spaghetti, butternut and Hubbard are all winter squash. Some, like butternut and Blue Hubbard, can be stored in a cool, dry garage all winter. According to [George Dickerson], sweetness and quality actually improve if the squash are stored for two to four weeks.

Salvias, both red and blue, grew there, as did the gray-green artemisias. Echinacea (purple coneflower) grew well. Stella D'Oro daylilies were used generously in street medians, and they looked great tidy, low growing thickets with bright yellow flowers. All of these plants seem to be quite flexible about their needs, adapting to whatever growing conditions they can get. Queen Anne's lace and golden rod grew beside the roads and in meadows with green grass. The usual flowers you see planted wherever you go petunias, impatiens, begonias, alyssum, geraniums grew in planters and in flower beds with no sign of stress. We planted a desert four o'clock as a ground cover in one corner of the front yard. It was lovely the first couple of years, then it died. Ah, but it wasn't gone. Several desert four o'clock plants popped up in the back yard, probably seeded there when birds feasted on seed from the original plant.

Knock wood, the squash bugs haven't found us yet. A couple of years ago, I read that mint planted near cucurbits (squash, cucumbers, pumpkins and melons) repels squash bugs. So we've planted the cucurbits near mint for the last couple of years, and so far it's worked. We have lemon balm, which is a mint, planted in the ground, because it tends to stay where it belongs. But the other mints chocolate mint, spearmint, peppermint and ginger mint we planted in 2- or 3-gallon plastic pots sunk into the ground, so the mint wouldn't run amok in the garden. One of our daughters, who lives in Rio Rancho, asked how to get rid of the squash bugs that were eating her cucumbers, and I suggested mint. She got small mint plants and planted them throughout the garden where her cucumbers, squash and melons were planted. By the next day, she said, the squash bugs were gone.

Lots of trees have bare branches and sparse leaves. Whole limbs are dying on some of them. The other day I saw a yard where drip irrigation was delivering water to the base of a mature fruit tree, but the tree still had dead branches and yellowing leaves. \"A lot of trees are dying backward from the tips of branches inward and downward toward the living wood,\" he continued. \"I've seen a lot of trees with little tufts of leaves growing in patches instead of full leafing. These are clear signs of water stress.\" In another bulletin from New Mexico State, I read about experiments under way comparing the use of microsprinklers with flood irrigation in fruit orchards in New Mexico. So far, it looks like using microsprinklers under the trees uses 30 to 40 percent less water than flood irrigation. That concept can be used with urban trees by placing a sprinkler under the tree, near the trunk, and letting the water spray outward toward the drip line. The leaf canopy slows water loss to evaporation, the water droplets gradually soak into the soil rather than running off, and water is delivered to the zone where water-absorbing roots grow.

The two things all weeds have in common is that they're hard to get rid of and they're prolific. According to [Richard D. Lee], a single tumbleweed (also known as Russian thistle) produces 200,000 seeds. So when your car is attacked by a tumbleweed in the early spring, literally thousands of seeds imbed themselves in the crevices of the tire tread. Thus you inadvertently spread those seed for miles, planting masses of tumbleweeds as you go. You can win the weed wars if you're persistent. As you stroll around your yard watching things grow, pull weeds. You might have to use a forked weeding tool to get the deep tap roots of weeds like dandelions and Canada thistles, but if you don't get the whole root, they'll come back. It isn't realistic to expect to eradicate every weed. I think you have to decide which weeds have to go and which ones you can live with. I suppose you could consider the chocolate flowers in our front yard to be weeds. We bought one plant four years ago, and the next spring we had half a dozen or so. No problem. Then last year we decided to convert the small patch of Kentucky blue grass to water- thrifty blue gramma. A few tufts of blue gramma came up, but you certainly couldn't call it a lawn. It was more like a weed patch. This year, some of those weeds bloomed, and they turned out to be mostly chocolate flower. Now that little patch of what is supposed to be lawn looks more like a grassy meadow, with some grass, lots of chocolate flower, and some other blooming plants that I hope aren't too invasive.

I read several articles expounding the virtues of using red sheet plastic as a mulch around tomato plants to grow healthier, more productive plants. So we got some to try. Since we water the veggies with a drip line, we put the drip line down first, then put the red plastic on top. Already I can see a couple of disadvantages to the stuff. I put a small mound of dirt around the edges to hold it down, but that is woefully inadequate. The wind made short work of my efforts. Also, we water the plants on the bank behind the veggies with micro sprinklers, and the water that falls on the red plastic puddles there. Those puddles could be inviting to mosquitoes a little later in the season. I think we're going to have to pile up the dirt a bit under the plastic so water will drain off, and find some way to secure the edges against the wind. After the garden was planted, I finally got around to cleaning out the pond. It has been doing so well, I really hated to rock the boat. All the plants were growing, the fish were growing, the water was fairly clear. But people who know about such things said the pond should be mucked out once a year and the pond plants should be repotted in fresh dirt, preferably clay. We have sand, so we scrounged some clay that had been scraped out of an irrigation ditch not far from us. IT'S A DIRTY JOB: A water garden needs some not-so-lovely work to keep up appearances.; IN FULL BLOOM; Albert Saiz gardens among clouds of roses at his home in Los Lunas on Wednesday. May is among gardeners' favorite months for what it delivers despite what it demands in the way of work. For a May to-do list and one gardener's confrontation with cutworms, red plastic mulch and pond muck, see page A6.; Photo: JOURNAL FILE; b/w; JAY FLORES/FOR THE JOURNAL; Color (Photo shown on page 1.)

The speakers were Tammi Hartung, who has studied and grown herbs for more than 23 years and who with her husband, Chris, owns and operates the Desert Canyon Farm and Learning Center in southern Colorado; Santa Fe photographer Charles Mann, who specializes in photographing botanical and garden subjects as well as New Mexico culture; and Lois Sutton, an herbalist and master gardener from Houston. Hartung talked about the xeric herb garden; Mann offered insights for garden photography; and Sutton talked about cooking with herbs. Here's a brief summary of what each had to say: * Lightly flavored herbs, such as salad burnet, chervil, chives and parsley, are blending herbs because they seem to bring other flavors together. Because their flavors break down in heat, add at the end of cooking or sprinkle them on the dish just before serving.

[Ken Garrison] said bees produce an average of 56 pounds of honey per hive a year in New Mexico, with each hive housing from 80,000 to 90,000 bees by late summer. Worker bees live only 21 days; they literally wear their wings out gathering pollen. They live longer in the winter, but still, hive population dwindles over the winter. By February the population is at its lowest, with only 900 or so bees left. During cold weather, bees cluster together to keep the interior temperature of the hive a constant 93 degrees. When the air temperature outside gets up to 58 degrees, bees start flying again, collecting pollen.

Hunter ten Broeck owns and operates a xeric landscape and irrigation business. He designed and installed the xeric gardens at the Lovelace Medical Center on Gibson in Albuquerque. Ten Broeck said he began designing waterwise landscapes in 1993, before many people even knew what it was all about. He worked with [Judith Phillips] and [Jim Brooks] in a what he described as \"a nice symbiotic relationship.\" They helped and offered advice to each other and worked to get the word out about the benefits of growing plants more suited to a desert environment. Those who advertise black plastic compost containers don't consider the desert Southwest, he added. A compost container needs to be well aerated. Let a dry scab build to hold the moisture in, he said, and once the pile is dry inside, turn it and water it.