I had a terrarium about 22 years ago and put a small violet in it. I then happened upon the spring violet show of the Seattle AVS. When I learned that many of the show plants were for sale, I went nuts! I think I bought about 20 or so that day. They did really well until we moved to California, and over the years they died one by one. I have had some off and on for the last ten years here in Maine, and was given a dish garden as a retirement gift. It had a violet in it. It continued to bloom over the winter, and I rekindled my interest. I pledged however that I would learn as much about them as I could, and with the internet today that was much easier than it would have been twenty years ago. So what started as one in February of 2006 has blossomed into about 325 varieties. And even more important, I have acquired a lot of knowledge about them. A great deal of that information has come from this forum, so a great big thank you and a hug to you all. And yes, I have planned trips and vacations around vendor locations...... Barbara

It's amazing what people will do. Earlier this year, just as my Daphne odora was blooming, someone came along and yanked it out of my front border. It had been in the ground two years and was fairly substantial, but the plant thief managed to pull it out (not properly dug up) in the wee hours of the morning. VERY annoying, to say the least...

I do hope Carl IS enjoying his retirement. His daughter tells me that he has a "new lady friend", and that they are taking ball room dancing lessons. I find that just entertaining as heck, Carl doing the waltz instead of packing beef! I observed a moment or so of silence in Carl's honor. His brother, Dallas, will still do my slaughter for me, but I've got to find a new place to do the actual cutting and packaging. That means that at least my animals, for now, will not have to be trucked or shipped or handled by anyone except me, and their eventual end will be the same process as it has always been, and performed as quickly and humanely as possible. Annie

I think the best of the bland rooms are perfectly fine. But they aren't particularly engaging, and I think these sorts of things become a self-fulfilling prophesy. You get bored with your sofa or your LR because, well, it's boring. I think the worst of the bland rooms have neutrals that don't even work that well together but people *think they do because "all neutrals work together", and really--they don't. I think there is a certain amount of aged-into commitment, but I think that that really shows itself when things that really need to be replaced don't get replaced. Even if the homeowner who decorated the baroque-regency house was 90, she would have been in her 40s when the house was essentially completed, and that's not so old, is it :) She did it her way and then it was done. The true aged-into interiors I think of are these: My mother had a friend who redid her late 1950s rambler in high mid-70s style when she turned about 50.(Not kitschy 70s, but monochromatic heavy upholstery fabrics and silks and low deep sofas and oversized low tables) Most of the house was unchanged at her death. But I remember when something happened to her bedspread from the high-70s redo maybe in the 1990s and she redid her drapes and bedspread, and she just ordered a matching set of curtains and bedding coordinates from Sears. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't what she would've done when she was younger--it just wasn't something she wanted to put effort into (I was kind of surprised because she made major shopping expeditions to Saks and Neiman's for her clothes right up to the end). The other "grown into" thing has happened at my parents own house. The lampshades have been deteriorating for years, and we have gone from replacing with an interior designer in the 1990s, to trying some from Restoration Hardware a bit later, to trying some from Walmart in the 2000s, to turning them around so the rip is in the back in the 2010s.