Blue Girl. Absolutely a delightful fruity scent that is strong, a beautiful pinky-lavender color, delicate light yellow stamens, and usually 18 to 24 inches of thorn-free stems. In fact, most of my Blue Girl is thorn-free. Great scent means delicate petals, though, and she will get ugly in the rain. I have her planted underneath the eaves of the front of my house to give her maximum protection from raindrops. She's very hardy here, too, and widely available at nurseries, at least down here. As for the other part--thorn removal---not a biggie for me. I usually endure the summer looking like a victim of cat scratch fever. I have bad allergy problems & went through years of those needle tests, so I'm pretty unfazed by getting stuck or getting staples, nails, needles, or thorns stuck in me. I usually just pull them out with tweezers & then spray the area with peroxide.

Cindeea Seems like both you and i have found a treasure to share our lives. Wood floors are sooo great. In New York, as well as in Europe, hardwood floors were the norm, but we were told, in Florida it is not a good thing. Well, my asthma forced us to remove all w/w carpeting, and install wood floors in all the bedrooms, I have to say, makes me feel like i am home again. But for the pain, we had a spa built next to the pool, with therapy jets, and it has been a life saver for me. If they ever get the MB finished, my husband had a spa added on to the room, complete with a huge steam room,sauna and the most incredible 2person tub i have ever seen, with a comfortable seat for your lounging time, with therapy jets everywhere, icluding the end of the armrest. All this just to get some relief from the everpresent pain. Actually, seems like an old friend, not one you like at all, but one who seems to have come for a visit, and refuses to leave. Do whatever you can to keep cheerful, and give a big hug to that man of yours for us too. irene

Well, I'm presently working on the stump of a diseased austrian pine we had to take down last year. We hoped it would rot on its own but it didn't happen. I realize I could smother it in rock salt, but I figure there's enough problems with our soil - a large lot with pines and maples - needles everywhere. So I don't want to add to the problems. Someone from America suggested setting it on fire but you know how Toronto is - there are bylaws against so much as blowing your nose. I'm just cutting and cutting at it. Yesterday (in that marvelous 11 celsius weather) I worked on it for about 3 hours - praise be for Ben Gay and Tylenol for Arthritis. This is the toughest job on the lot right now, so I'd like to have it out of the way before my gardening season starts. Once it's out, completely clean of its extraneous roots, I want to put in mulched leaves, level it out, add some organic soil and plant some juniper clippings I've been raising all winter. I put the clippings into small containers outside the window around the middle of October. They have remained green all winter so I figure they've taken - yahoooooo! I'm really looking forward to seeing them in that spot where the stump is. ................ I am going to work with some vegetables this year - Barbara Kingsolver's book 'Small Wonder' has an essay of hers about growing your own vegetables and buying local. She has convinced me that each of us should try to grow at least one thing to eat - even if you have only a balcony. I usually do some herbs like oregano, basil, etc., but I'm making an effort with parsnips, broccoli, peas, green pepper, etc., this year. I think I'll just use containers outside the window. I put my seeds into pots about 4 days ago - the broccoli has already sprouted! They're in the windowsill of course - this mild weather every few days doesn't fool me into putting them into the ground. I'll leave that for the southerners. ........... I have lots of coleus - it's holding up well indoors this year. I'm not going to just hog it on my table garden (which I usually do). I'm going to spread it around the lot. My husband superintends an apartment building and we have a lot of grounds here - if you'd like to see some of it, go to the gardening section on my writing forums . . . http://wildcity.proboards14.com/index.cgi?board=gardening Feel free to participate there, if you like. It's only me and another girl, but others are certainly welcome.

Thanks all for a lot of good advice. I shared this thread with my friend. She is also getting additional feedback from others including professional advice from her doctor. Like some of you commented, Baraiatric surgery today seems quite different than a few years ago. I also asked our family doctor who is quite conservative and his opinion was that it depends on co-morbities like diabetes, high cholesterol etc. For many people this is resolved. However, it is but a tool and lifestyle changes are key. Unlike procedures like Lap band which has issues like slippage, vomiting etc., and more drastic procedures like gastric bypass where there is serious issues with not being able to absorb enough vitamins and such, the specific procedure that she is looking at is sleeve gastrectomy that leaves the intestines intact. She will need to take calcium everyday. A chewable vitamin is good as eating very less food initially is very stressful for the body. But once the sutures are healed, she can eat normal food for most part.. Just less of it and more protein. A very hard decision but she has a good support group among friends and family.