Oh Barbra, you go girl! Pricklypear I did buy all those roses through mail order in May and June. I have a spread sheet listed where they came from, how long in transit, how good they looked on arrival, bare root, potted, grafted, or own root. It's my summer experiment! The sales are so spectacular so I want to know what works or how well for next years sales. I ordered from J&P (the best bare roots ever), David Austin, Parks Wholesale, and Ashdown. Ashdown was the only one that shipped in pots, the shipping was more expensive than the roses themselves. The cheapest were the roses from Parks, I got Heritage for $3.89. The average was about $8 per rose and I also got a weeping maple for $15 (it was flat rate shipping so I said why not?). All of them were Austin English roses (it's an addiction), the only ones that did do spectacular in the shipping were the 3 from Ashdown, since they had leaves and it's so darn hot they came with bs. Just another thing to note on the spreadsheet for next year. All the bare roots leafed out spectacularly in the water buckets so far except for 2 of the 3 Heritage's have only got a few buds on the canes. These will be potted and we'll se how they do. I really think the mild wet weather has something to do with this luck though, I mean it's June and in the 80's, unheard of!

Thanks for all of your kind words. I'm trying to keep a positive approach to this latest unfortunate accident of mine. For those who asked, yes, my bone density is very good. My right hand was injured when the ligament tore while I was trying to open a jar. I had surgery in mid-February to reattach it. With this last injury, as I tripped on my little dog, I grabbed into the D-shaped refrigerator handle of my garage fridge with my left hand. My hand snapped backwards and twisted, causing a spiral fracture of the 5th metacarpal bone. DD is thankfully home from college for the Summer and is taking good care of me. I've already finished, "Beneath a Marble Sky", which is the (wonderful, sad, tragic, amazing, happy and romantic) story behind the building of the Taj Mahal. Loved it! I'm now reading the last Tony Hillerman novel, "The Shape Shifter". My hand is hurting more than I anticipated, but I'm taking good care of it and me. Lynn

Carol, your blender is really neat! I haven't seen a commercial with pushbutton speeds like that before. I think the ones I remember only had high and low. Tracey, I too have gotten some of my best recipes out of mixer cookbooks, especially before cooking forums and what not! Pete, I think that Pleasant Grain often has a sale just before Mother's Day, so I'll watch and see if they do this year. I put all my holiday bonus and tax refund in the bank, so maybe I'll spend part of my rebate on something fun, since I guess technically what you're supposed to do is spend it, LOL. By the way, on a similar but different topic, did you know that Miele is coming out later this year with a new line of upright vacuums that they are making themselves instead of rebadged Panasonics? I think Andy said they'll be out in the US in the 4th quarter, I think earlier in Europe, not sure about Canada.

After much research last year I purchased a Kitchaid from AJMadison, the online appliance store (and no I do not work or represent them in any way). It is model KUDT03STSS and I love it. It has so much versatility to the loading process - tines up here or down in another spot, upper drawer moves up and down and so on. I love that it has an upper utensil drawer (over the glasses) so that you don't always have to have a big utensil holder take up space in the regular part of the dishwasher. I rarely prerinse and 99% of the time I use the light cycle without the automatic drying and it works just great. I do make sure that the hot water runs to the sink before I turn it on as they suggest. They are also great for servicing. I did call them about a week after it was installed because I thought it was leaking. They were there within two days but it turned out the water I was seeing was from the dishwasher I replaced. Again, I would highly recommend it.