Now retired here in Nashua, New Hampshire, I started my career with a BSEE in electrical engineering. But the field of computer software engineering was far too fascinating for me to ignore. So, for awhile I combined the two, writing software to solve electrical engineering problems. Soon after, I turned my career focus entirely over to software engineering, developing an interest in computer graphics and pattern recognition.

Along the way I got married, raised three kids, and worked with a youth group, handling all their computer support needs. I've always enjoyed working with kids, and organized a number of canoe trips with them.

Over the years I've gotten increasingly interested in gardening, especially with regard to growing a wide variety of trees and shrubs. All went well, until around 2003, when suddenly most everything in my yard started dying. Unfortunately, the experts weren't of much help in getting to the root of the problem.

So I resolved to find the cause of this disease using all the tools at my disposal: state diagnostic labs, reference texts, Internet searches, attending a Master Gardener course, participating in a city tree inventory, walking the streets gathering evidence, and, finally, using my computer with various software programs, a scanner, and a USB microscope.

Now that I've amassed this large body of knowledge about this disease, I'd like to share it with others by making it widely available through this website. Hopefully, this will allow others to avoid some of the anguish I went through.