Yes, indeed, I feel your pain and, strangely, I have echoed your sigh. I found this website searching for an answer to my inquiry: "Severly damaged jewel orchid." While in Florida with my sister, I bought this orchid knowing NOTHING about it, but it had such beautiful leaves, I had to have it and give it a try. I asked the ladies at the shop where I bought it, "What does the bloom look like?" They said they didn't know...they'd never seen it. So, for $20, I bought this very small plant with the beautiful leaves and transported it up to Northern Virginia. Two months later it sent up a spike and I called my sister and told her that "the funky orchid is blooming. Come quick!" The very next day I discovered that the plant had been broken BELOW the lowest leaves. I don't know if the cleaning ladies did it, but I just sighed and decided to move ahead. (I love my cleaning ladies.) So, I entered this forum and asked if the plant might survive....either the top part or the bottom part. I received a few helpful responses and clipped the spike...WITH BUDS (oh, woe is me!)...and have left the bottom part, with no leaves but with roots, in the pot untouched. The upper part, with the leaves, I've left in the spaghnum moss and the leaves are slowly sulking...but they are wilting more slowly than before and, when I clipped the spike, I thought I saw a root!!!! So, I'm leaving both parts alone to see if either will survive. Good luck. It's painful to lose an orchid, but more painful to lose a good cleaning crew! Good luck. Kathleen

My two cents, a lot of your water comes from Lake Lopez and Lake Naciemento, both in SLO county. While our lakes are being tapped dry from both the north & south, we're being infiltrated by more people. Our dwindling water supplies cannot support a couple hundred thousand people migrating to the small towns wanting to change them with big city ideas & government. I agree too many people, and poor management are the problem. Agriculture is suffering statewide because of all these water laws. People are being taxed per head for cattle and other livestock in the name of emissions control, grow up! We used to have the largest agriculture producing state in the nation, and 6th in the world, we had plenty of water even in drought, but now everyone wants that tract of land with manicured lawn & vineyards in the desert, no less! When the agriculture industry dies in CA, so will the population. But then the land won't be usefull any more. Old vineyards are no good for anything other than housing, nothing else will grow on the land afterwards. well it ran into more like a dime, but you can keep the change.

Not hosta, but several others were run down, in a true hit run. Someone came into our driveway presumably to turn around too fast, hit the gravel then skidded over a daylily, clematis roots, catmint and several annuals then hit a picket fence. We assumed the speed/gravel part because they took off, and neither us nor a neighbor saw this. They picked up the fence and righted it using plants they hadn't run over to hold it up. I noticed the squished plants (the pansies were goners, everything else has come back to some extent, the daylily only has distorted leaves to show for it, the clem is fine, the catmint is still stunted). Couldn't for the life of me figure out how they missed the fence...until it tipped over on it's own revealing the broken posts. The VERY NEXT DAY an elderly gentleman came to get some lily of the valley, and backed out over the squished daylily and pansies again! That bed has been there since we bought the place, seems that was some seriously bad timing because it never happened before that.

Thanks! I'm not looking for deals per se' to get the rug any cheaper or wtg. for sales. I know that D&A has a fair price policy & supports local retailers. Granted I've never bought a large rug new but I was a little surprised that I would have to pay an extra $40 S&H to the store. That seemed odd - in all of my yrs. in home goods retail I've never encountered having to ask anyone to pay me (the store) extra money for S&H to get something in. Maybe that's one of the many reasons that store went out of business lol! I guess I figure that if I'm going to have to pay that much in S&H and still have to pick it up at the store, then I may as well bypass the store, order it online for the same price and have it delivered right to my home. Who wants to wrestle w/ a 6x9 rug getting it in and out of doors, cars & traipsing it up and down sidewalks to get it home? When I went through a trial run order on the D&A site the S&H for it was $25. Still less than the store's S&H charge to me.