Hi! Thanks for all the input from y'all. I appreciate it very much. I've looked closely at the pictures of the woolly aphids and the bugs I've seen just don't look like those. I think these bugs are larger and they run, not walk, over the leaf. They are not coating anything because they're too busy running around the leaves. There are not very many of them. I saw one larger one and two smaller ones on the same leaf and they were all running around. That larger one I tried to catch scooted over the edge of the leaf and underneath then fell off of the bottomside of the leaf. I've got to catch one of them so I can really look at it and wouldn't ya know--Now that I want to catch one, do you think I can FIND one of them anywhere? A Guinea pig is what came to mind when I saw those bugs--One of those with the hair that has all the cowlicks in its hair that makes it go all which way. I know that sounds crazy, but... I haven't seen any wings on these bugs. I'll keep looking for them and see if I can catch one and take a picture of it. Then I will have to see if Mike can help me figure out how to put it on the forum for you to see. I'm sorry some of you have had such a time of it with the Junebugs. I went out late at night and picked them off the fig tree out back and then I went out and wasn't seeing them anymore. We haven't had many around so far this year. I guess, from what several of you have said, we know where they all are. I'm so sorry that they are tearing up your trees like that. Most of you have more trees than I do and it would be impossible to pick the bugs off of all of them. Serena, where do you live that the Junebugs are so bad this year? God bless you and your trees, Vivian

Whiteflies are one of the many insect pests that have developed immunities to many of the synthetic pesticides out there so an understanding of their life cycle helps with control. Yellow sticky traps can be used, even though they are most often used to determine the presence of some pests every one caught on that trap is one less adult to mate or lay eggs. The link below provides access to a good article, free to cownload as a .pdf file which requires Adobe Reader or to read as an HTML but costs to print out. Here is a link that might be useful: Whitefly control

Sure! How's the ice cream going? The information about the shortening was in Loves2cook4six's thread about substituting for dairy in a tart recipe. Cloud Swift recommended Spectrum cold pressed palm oil shortening. I've baked a lot with the trans fat free shortening that used to be made by Smart Balance then seemed to be the same thing made by Crisco. It works fine in cakes and breads, but it separates when you try to melt it, and it's pretty stiff even at room temperature. The Spectrum is soft and kind of velvety at room temperature, and just becomes softer and looser when melted in the microwave. I think that's from being pressed rather than concocted. A couple of years ago I started researching matzah ball recipes for a vegetarian friend and found a lot that didn't sound good, but saved a file with ones that had potential. The only one I found that had shortening rather than oil (from mrfood.com) was very close to our old family recipe with the addition of water. Some of the better liquid oil recipes used seltzer. I thought that made them sound really loose, but my friend gave me a Soda Stream and I thought it sounded fun to include it. I have no idea if the bubbles actually help anything. :) The shortening recipe sounded best because the proportions didn't just say substitute liquid oil for schmaltz, one to one, which sounds goofy to me, but I waited until the end to add the water, to see if it needed it. In the end, I combined all the recipes and it came out really well. Here's what I made (which I already e-mailed to the friend since she still hasn't made any matzah balls, hence the extremely detailed directions): Vegetarian Matzah Balls Yield: 37 medium sized matzah balls Cooking time: 8-9 hours. No joke. • 12 eggs • 1.5 cup soda water • 1 cup vegetable shortening, melted --Spectrum cold pressed. • 1 + 1 scant teaspoon salt • 1 teaspoon black pepper • 1 teaspoon white pepper • 3-4 Tablespoons (one handful) of Fines Herbes • 3 cups whole wheat matzo meal (Yehuda) 1. Separate the eggs into separate mixer bowls. If you only have one mixer bowl, put the whites in that and the yolks in another large bowl. Add about 1/4 tsp of the salt to the eggwhites. Put the rest, along with the pepper and dried herbs in the matzah meal and stir well. 2. Combine the yolks, shortening, and matzah meal and mix well, alternating between shortening and mix about three times. If you're doing it by hand, use a heavy wooden spoon or use the paddle on the mixer. It should all be well stuck together. Add the soda water about a third at a time and mix well. Adding the water in stages helps you assess how wet you want it and adjust the amount of water you add. It could vary on things like how wet the eggs are. The end result should be about the consistency of chocolate chip cookie dough. Stiff but not rigid, and not loose and wet. 3. Whip the salted whites to stiff peaks with the wire whisk on the mixer. Don't worry if it's not perfect meringue. It'll still work. 4. Gently fold the whites into the yolk/matzah meal mixture, using a heavy wooden spoon. Add about a quarter of the whites on top, then reach under with the spoon, turning it over as you reach the top. The mix should seem to wetten, but don't keep folding until all the white is absorbed--you'll overwork the batter and squash all the loft out of the eggwhites. Just fold until the white is like a ribbon through. Add the rest a quarter at a time, gently folding. It should still feel kind of fluffy when it's all mixed, and have no big white spots. Stop as soon as you can. 5. Cover and chill 30-120 minutes. (Half to two hours). Don't leave it much longer, or all the loft will go out. 6. Fill your biggest, widest, pot (stock pot, bean pot) about 3/4 full of water and put it on to boil. You'll want a rolling boil, but even with induction that much water takes some time to boil. If it's ready before you are, turn it down. Bringing it back to the boil will be easy. 7. Put a bowl of water where you're working to rinse your hands and a tray lined with parchment paper to put the balls on. (You can drop them right into the water but this is easier for me.) A medium food scoop is a great help for portioning. Take a rounded scoop's worth (i.e, don't flatten, but get round like a scoop of ice cream, but measure with your eyes--don't try to make it any particular shape in the scooper. Use a soup or serving spoon to get a similar portion if you don't have a scoop. Handle and mush the batter as little as possible. Dump the scooped portion--the size of a walnut or golf ball--into your damp hands and very gently roll it to form the ball shape. Don't worry about the exact shape. Just give it one roll in one direction and one in the other, without pressing, and put it down. Rinse/wet your hands as needed. 8. When your matzah balls are ready and your water is at a rolling boil, lower the water to a fast simmer--the high end of low (probably number 3). Carefully place matzo balls in the boiling water trying not to get spattered. Simmer for as long as you can. Bare minimum, 4 hrs. They'll sink first, then they'll rise to the top. If you have more balls than room at the top, they'll kind of stack up and the top ones start to turn brown. Just bop them down with your wooden spoon so the brown parts turn under and to let lower level ones up. After they've floated for a long time, they'll start to submerge, though they don't go down all the way to the bottom. When they're all hiding under the surface they might be done, but you could leave them in for another hour or more. If they start looking waterlogged and fluffy floating away, as in falling apart, they're overdone, so aim for 5-7 hrs. Yes, other people make matzah balls that they say are done in less than an hour, but this is how we do them for firm, fully cooked, tender and bounce free matzah balls. 9. Drain the matzah balls well while you're dishing them up. I use a ladle with a built in strainer, but you could also fish them out with a slotted spoon or small strainer with a long handle. Nobody likes the matzah ball water in their soup. :)

One thing I would look at with the duvet is the measurements. Most of the ones that I have seen are not made to drape over the sides of the beds all that much. Just something to think about when considering it. I have a duvet on my bed year round. I think that we picked it up at J.C. Penney. It has large baffle boxes and is probably a medium weight. I can cram the whole thing into my front loader washing machine if needed and then I hang it over the half wall of my stairway to dry. I try to hang it up around bedtime because wet down does reek. If the weather is right, once in I while I will just hang it outside in the sun to freshen up instead of going into the wash. We have a linen cover from Restoration Hardware that we use on it. My house is not air conditioned and I use it most nights (although it is definitely less humid here than where you are). Personally, I do not like the way the synthetic stuff shifts or feels (which makes finding a pillow I like difficult, too) so definitely spend some time feeling the different inserts.