At-home daughter needs car insurance

Q My daughter graduated from college and is coming home to live with us for a year. Do we need to add her to the car insurance policy if she is just an occasional driver? How does that work?

A You can add her to your policy, but the smarter choice is for her to get her own policy, advised Mark Kulda with the Minnesota Insurance Federation.

If she's in a crash with another vehicle and there's an injured party, that person can go after the parents' assets if she's on their policy. With her own policy, she's her own person, and that would limit what the courts have access to, he said.

In any case, she needs insurance even if she's an occasional driver. If she's living at home and has access to a car, insurance companies will treat her as a driver of the car. If you don't add her, the insurance company will, Kulda said. And they take measures to discover if there are drivers not listed on policies.

Help suffering trees It's been a dry and windy spring, a bad combination for landscapes already struggling with drought conditions. Trees, even mature trees, are suffering after three years of below-normal precipitation and several cold winters with scant snow, which damages tree roots. Trees may seem OK, but they aren't. In many parts of the state, trees are being stressed. That makes even towering oaks susceptible to disease and insects.

Start watering! A young tree will need 1 inch a week; a mature tree a couple of inches a month. Simply watering the lawn won't help the trees. The turf sucks up the water before it gets to the tree roots. Use soaker hoses or a hose on a slow stream for several hours around the tree. Place the hose near the trunk and also out to the drip line of the leaves. Move hoses for better distribution.

If that's not possible, punch a couple of holes in the bottom of a bucket, fill it with water and set it under the tree to drain. At the very least, fill a bucket with water regularly and dump it into a mulched well around the tree.