Thank you all for the very nice comments.It would have helped if I would have thought and pulled off the spent blooms in the first picture,but geez it was hot out there.It was 93 and heat index was 98.Too hot for me. Jean

Don, he wasn't my first parrot....He could be likened to finally getting a Porsche, if you're into cars. I brought him home when he was 5 weeks old.... about mid-April, 1999. Here is his baby picture when he came home. I'd been going over to my friend's house (the breeder), to hand feed him when she pulled him from the nestbox. I continued to hand feed him, with what is called "abundance feeding" so he weaned himself, at 22 weeks old, without feeling deprived. He weighed 600 grams as a well fed baby boy, and he weighs that now as an adult. He has beautiful feathers, no fat, great muscle tone especially in his breast which allows him to fly efficiently.....but consider that birds are so aerodynamic, with hollow bones, hollow feathers, they eat moderately frequently, also poop frequently and do it almost EVERY time before they take flight....which is a clue to imminent flight, by the way.

I never could afford a "dream" car, but my best liked, all around family car was the 1964 Dodge Dart, Automatic, with the 264 cubic inch V8 engine. I drove that one to 100,000 miles and would have kept it longer except the body was rusting out due to our winter laden salted roads and I needed a replacement for our growing family. It had a good balance between power and economy, a smooth running trouble free engine, and was a good long distance driver. Visibility was good. What was unique about it? This little V8 was based on the larger 318 engine, but had thin wall castings for weight savings. Many of the internal parts were interchangeable with the 318: Crank shaft, cam shaft, cam chain, distributor, and oil pump. The spacings between cylinders were indentical so the engine could be made on the same line as its big brother 318. The pistons were smaller but the designers used a large heavy wrist pin to make the piston-wrist pin combination weight the same as the larger engine. That way, both engines could be run on the same engine balancing line. The all time most smooth engine I ever owned was a 1954 Dodge Red Ram V8 (its a hemi). It was not a particularily powerful engine, but so very smooth and quiet. One day, we were shuttled into a roadside safety check. The officer made the inspection and laid his clipboard on the hood to make the final entries, AND the he asked me to start the engine. The enigine had been running all the time. I had to jazz the throttle to convince him. He did not feel it while writing on his clipboard which was on the hood and he could not hear it over the street noise.

We did our Black Friday shopping at Kohl's online earlier today. Bought a new comforter set for the new bedroom set we bought last month for our guest room. If you buy $75 or more it was free shipping. The comforter set was $69 so we bought a much needed 1 qt sauce pan for $16. Used the free shipping code and I found another code for 15% off so the total bill was about $95. We got free shipping but because the comforter set is large, we had to pay a surcharge of $7.50 or so. Where ever you order from, Google the store name and the words Coupon Code and you will find other deals out there to bring the cost down. Jodi-