Out of curiosity, where in upstate NY? I visited somebody at Cornell and it's beautiful there. How much shade? I think Kentucky bluegrass (KBG) is probably the best choice for upstate New York in sunny areas. For shady areas, a fine fescue mix would be better. If you have a mixture of sun and shade, you'll probably want to plant KBG in the sunny areas and transition to a mixture of KBG and fine fescue and then all fine fescue in the shade. If you google "Kentucky Bluegrass Seed Selections" you'll find a variety of resources to pick good cultivars. I don't think there are as many choices for fine fescues. Some people have reported good results with the Bonny Dunes mixture.

Just an update - we went to largest syrup producer in the state (not far from us), I didn't ask specifically about mold but he said in tour that they get the syrup to 7.1-7.3 degrees above boiling water (so check your altitude but 219-220 sounds right). High-sugar sap at beginning of season doesn't take long to turn to syrup, lower-sugar end of season takes longer so it turns out more brown. But they use a hydrometer to check brix - want it 66-67% sugar. Too much sugar and it crystalizes, to little sugar and it's not legal maple syrup (and I guess it molds, b/c he said they boil the sap the day it's collected, and collect it every day, b/c the high water content is hospitable to bacteria and he doesn't want the bacteria eating all the sugar!). My mom's neighbor was making a batch on her woodfired evaporator last night, again she gets it to 219, puts it right into hot sterilized jars (doesn't let it cool much I guess - she wasn't jarring it when we were there), inverts them. Doesn't BWB but says that you don't want to allow much headspace at all, fill it right up to the top (?) then invert. But she only makes about 5 gallons a year, donates it to church for pancake supper in April so it doesn't get stored long. I imagine she keeps some for herself (3 gallons or so, she gave us about 12 oz in exchange for jars and blackberry jam), but maybe she refrigerates it. Mu mom just poured it into an almost-empty quart of store-bought (pure, not fake!) syrup in the fridge so she could give back the jar today, so I don't know how it would keep.

Usually the more finely detailed part goes on the bottom, not the ceiling. The profiles usually have larger curves at the top and smaller, tighter curves at the bottom. If you look at charlieinnj's link above, you will see what I mean. Diane

The short hair cats we've had -- siamese and burmese -- never needed to be bathed, and we would comb or brush them if they liked it even though it was not necessary. But the Persian cats we've had were a nuisance to take care of. Their hair is long and it mats easily, and it sheds all over the place. They often do not like to be combed or brushed because, I think, it hurts them because the hair is all knotted up. The other problem is that they often do not clean their rear ends after their BMs, and the only way to take care of that is to put lots of talcum powder there and comb it out, sort of like cleansing the area. Not a pleasant task. We would wait until the weather got real hot in the summer and shave off all the hair on our Persians and let it grow back. For a while, it looked good and was easy to keep untangled. But then, as it got longer and thicker, the problems would start all over again. After living with 2 Perian cats and putting up with the inconvenience, we decided to stick to siamese & burmese.