Much to my dismay, the lilies I received from a friend turned out to be ditch lilies. Those suckers are everyWHERE! I'm getting out roundup. I can't believe it! ARRRRUUUGH. I have decided where to grow gooseneck loosestrife and I am willing to put up with it to keep it in check. Problem is, there are two areas I need to eradicate it from and that's not going to be easy. PLUS, I have a ton of dandelions and henbit this year - worse than last year. I'm out there spraying and pulling.

I focus on the 32F, Bonnie, but it becomes the "town closest," or to the hill above the town, to the neighborhood, to out front/under the tree . . . The frost will form on the roof of the vehicle in the driveway but there will be none on the lawn on the other side of the fence - with the same blue sky above. We can say that the dandelion, or any plant, is simply responding to what has been happening in its immediate environment. Of course, that is not a 100% indication of what "will happen" in its environment. But, what can be valued in the phenological signs are the immediateness in space and time of plant responses. About 30 days ago, something happened which set another something in motion for the plant. Given certain conditions, another so many days will pass and something else will occur. I suspect that some of these environmental prompts are no more than a few weeks in the past. The plant's internal processes are set on a course that show results in a fairly short time. The Weather Service's measurements cover a century, or so. Averaging indicates frost, or near frost, or hard frost. This year's data hasn't yet been recorded. One of the criticisms of the WS is that, often, even this decade's data hasn't been factored in. Nevertheless, we are coming down to the greatest influence on spring warmth of all: the sun and the angle of the sunlight on our environment. The calendar is our indicator of that but I cannot ignore, the dandelion. Steve linked below are observations made over the previous decade by a community group in Minnesota. it is truly confined to place. i assume that the "first dandelion" is a recording of the first dandelion bloom, not the appearance of seed. Here is a link that might be useful: Signs of Spring: Maplewood, Minnesota

I had a Miele Novotronic for 8 years and it worked great when we replaced it purely based on looks (dh wanted stainless). Now we have the Miele Crystal and it is even more wonderful (and looks awesome too). I ADORE how quiet our Mieles have been and that is very very important to me as we have an open concept kitchen and my "office" is the dining table near the dishwasher. Programming - read the manual...it is not rocket science, just takes a little fiddling. You do it once then it's done. Salt - find out whether you even need it. We don't due to soft domestic water supply and we have programmed our dishwasher accordingly. Rinse Aid - dishwasher works fine without it, but dishes don't dry as well. With our new dishwasher I have the rinse aid setting programmed to the lowest setting and will work up until I am satisfied with the drying. You can disable the rinse aid indicator/setting if your tabs include rinse aid - mine don't. I think having separate rinse aid makes sense so you can calibrate it. Tabs - Method Smarty tabs are easy to cut in half, but require a little pressure. Some of the "eco" tabs available to me in supermarkets and specialty food stores seem like they have less soap to begin with so they probably don't need to be cut in half. None of these have rinse aid built in. All of these tabs are cheap and readily available to me. Rinsing/scraping - I doubt rinsing will cause damage to normal dishes, but I never rinse, only scrape. The Miele manual specifically says that rinsing is not necessary. Stuff I put in the dishwasher - EVERYTHING! Even the worst pots and baking pans go in the dishwasher. Occasionally something doesn't come off 100%, in which case a 10 second scrub with a brush finishes the job. 3rd tray - LOVE Express - mine is 35 min

I figured out how to trick my Bosch last week when I had to wash a king sized pillow. Start and stop didn't work but I was able to turn it off and reselect the cycle and get it to add more water 3 times before it decided it wasn't going to fill any more. I've never needed to mess with the water level before, but that giant pillow really needed the extra water. I soaked it for an hour, then washed on hot with an extra rinse and it cleaned up great.