Before this gets away, let me tell you that Benny Lopez belongs in every fragrant garden. It was wonderful, although I may have been the only person to sniff it. Many, many of the roses in the show were HTs and for some reason, not many people there expected roses to be fragrant. Yes, we did fly to California for the Convention- not to show but to hear the talks. We're different that way. Someday I'll tell you about the tough day we had on the way out, let's just say we got drained by unavoidable stuff. Then we got to see a bit of LA...chortle...traffic...and more traffic, and we mistimed our visit to the StageCoach Inn Rose garden, so we enjoyed it through the metal gate. About Stagecoach's roses- still in the shade approaching noon, really good bloom and bloom quality for that amount of shade, good bloom color too...but (easterners and southerners) you would not believe how dense the leaves, the totally healthy leaves, are on those plants. I have never seen such dense leaves on tea roses. Simply awesome. It was good to visit with the west coasters and to talk with some of the eastern folks we'd been out of touch with. In retrospect, next time we do something like this with good older rose talks, we need to have a hospitality room that night...for more good talking. And, yes, Larry got to ride along Rte 66. We even saw some wonderful restored autos driving alongside of us...but they were on the interstate a tenth of a mile away while we were bouncing along avoiding pot holes on 66. That might have squelched his urge to drive a to-be-restored Packard cross country on Rte 66 (you may snap you fingers appropriately).

Countries all over the world are providing bountiful incentives for solar power plants, especially solar PV based power plants. I am wondering why such generous incentives should not be provided to research in biofuels as well? I do not however see it happening in any country, expect to some extent, in the United States. Well, one would have expected countries such as India that are highly reliant on other countries for almost all their oil would be keen on putting in significant investments into biofuels, but as this post suggests, they apparently are not: " Most power in India is produced by coal and hydroelectric power � both of which are available in plenty within India (yes, we import over 15% of our coal requirements, but we actually have reserves that will last us about 100 years at current levels of consumption). On the other hand, we have much less oil and import about 70% of our requirements (though it is nice to know that there have been some significant oil finds in the recent past by Cairn Energy and more recently by Reliance). India uses about 3.2 million barrels per day of oil, and about 2 million barrels per day are imported. At $75 a barrel, that�s $150 million per day, or $4.5 billion per year, or over $50 billion per year. Our FDI every year is about $30 billion., which means our import bill on oil easily wipes out all the gains we made on FDI. If our dependence on foreign countries is much higher for oil than for electricity, one would expect an equally high thrust to be provided by the government for the progress of biofuels as it is provided for renewable electricity. But I do not find an equal thrust. " I am from India and I can fully relate to what the author says. My country recently had the National Solar Mission in which the government plans to give hefty subsidy in the form of feed-in-tariffs to those putting up solar power plants. The government justifies such external incentives in the form of investment for the future. My question is, why cannot the government provide - through some form of subsidy - a similar incentive for research into jatropha? The current state of research in jatropha in countries such as India is laughable. Which is why I ask why there cannot be a National Jatropha Mission when there has been a National Solar Mission? Can any of you share any experiences in your countries where the government has been more proactive in assisting biofuel research? Here is a link that might be useful: Jatropha

I think the sauce would be great brushed on grilled or roasted squash, sweet potatoes and onions; it would also work perfectly into a stirfry of baby bok choy or broccoli. The plate is so unique and the cookbook looks fantastic. I can't wait to hear what you both try from it. Lynn, it's a great package that Sally will enjoy for a long time. Lee

Several years ago there was a news article on the 'Disappearance of the Open House Signs', that sprang up every Saturday morning! It seems many buyers weren't comfortable with their neighbors and strangers walking through their home, without desired results of offers. From statistics, (I presume from the industry) the article stated that an 'Open House' rarely benefited the house in which it was held, and the Realtor usually sold one of their other listings to the potential buyers! So good avenue for Realtors, not so good for your house!