What beautiful photos! The background flowers in the first three make them look like portraits! Very nice! These pictures are so nice, they would sell all these in a heartbeat! I love that name Garden Dancer (as well as the flower)! So, that's what Queen's Cape looks like! hehe....one day, mine will bloom...one day (I tell myself...not last year, not this year...). It's gorgeous, too! Well, Chris....you've raised the bar really high with these pictures! These are seriously some of the very best I've seen posted. Can't wait for more!

In Wayne Co, here is the hear-say as I understand it. First the background. It is the metro area of Detroit. They require 2x the hours of other counties in MI-I don't know why. I started to drop from the group because Wayne County's group would not count anything except activities that they sponsored or orgaized-this was later changed. There is a large ulmni in the group, which works at one of the large stores (used to be Franks). the $ (minimum wage) went to the Club treasurery----the workers, who were suppose to only give advice and not actually help put plants into people's cars, earned their hours. They also maintained a green house and sold alot of plants for $. Well, MSU decided that since the Wayne county group had so much money in their account, (they use it to pay for wonderful speakers for their monthly meetings) that they should send more money than the other groups back to MSU to help fund the program. Hey, why should they give more money just because they worked harder and had more manpower than smaller extension groups--this is not welfare. Remember the hype of the govenor who talked about cutting off all funding for the Extension offices. Well, the County/City officers were threatening the same thing recently, but also changed their minds. I don't have more details, but am sure other people can give us the correct info. I hope politics don't mess up a good thing like the Master Gardener program.

Jude, the groom's family decorated the hall and cleaned that all up except the kitchen. They actually like to drink and dance. I don't drink and I don't dance, and I was trying to avoid the "reserved" table as I'd rather wander around, sit with my friends and do as I pleased. The groom's family did come back the next day and finish cleaning the rest of the hall. I made all the desserts and 27 dozen dinner rolls ahead of time, so those just had to be taken from the freezer and plated on serving trays. Appetizers were nachos at a make your own nacho bar, so that was done ahead of time too. The dinner was a pig roast and the rest was pot luck with family members bringing items, so they just had to be put out and dishes kept full, but all the roasters and serving dishes needed to be washed afterward and most of them came from my house because the hall came with no cooking utensils. I did hire one friend to help me with that and my cousin Patty helped by scrubbing pans, but 300 guests kept us hopping. I hired a bartender, so I didn't have to do that, but we went through 19 gallons of punch and finally at 10:30 I tore the punch fountain apart because the kids were just playing in it. I haven't even washed the iced tea container yet! I don't sit around well and I'm pretty hyperactive, so I'd rather be doing something, anything. The groom's mother even went to the bachelorette party where they took salsa dancing lessons then went to a comedy club, I begged off because I have absolutely no interest. So, did I enjoy the wedding? Not much but I usually don't attend receptions because I don't like parties. I did what I was comfortable doing, and the alternative was to sit around and do nothing, which makes me crazy. The person who was supposed to make sure the coffee urn stayed full didn't and the one that was supposed to run the CD player for the wedding march was no where to be found so I quickly pressed an ex BIL into service because he is in a band and I figured he could run the blasted thing. Everyone comes to me with the questions and problems because I'm usually the one solving them and making sure things happen. Amanda was sitting in the foyer of the church in her dress and veil as the guests were coming in. She was passing out string cheese to the 6 children in the wedding party (all under age 8) while her sister Ashley was polishing Amanda's toenails, LOL. It was pretty relaxed. At the reception, Ashley sang a song for them to dance to, although it wasn't the song they'd picked out for their first dance. Then they had the "official" first dance, then Amanda danced with Bud while Dave danced with Makayla, then Amanda had a father/daughter dance, first with Bruce, then with Elery. So, it wasn't structured, it wasn't a sit down catered meal and everything went fine. I avoided my ex-husband and his girlfriend and was home in bed by 11 pm and got to visit a little bit with Sherry and Peppi, so it was all good. And I'm back at work today to rest! Annie

Whew, you all are making me glad that our cloudy winters mean cooler summers! We don't have AC and until we lost some trees around the house, never needed it but for maybe 2 days out of the year when temps were above 90 for several days running. Today I think it was 95 but we keep the curtains drawn all day long and open up when the sun starts going down (around 9pm) and leave some windows open all night. All we need is a couple of fans. I do have an AC unit for the master bedroom-but didn't even set that up this year. So that said, we don't ever get notices from our electric co about curtailing days. We do get a lot of incentives from them for lowering our wattage and we can choose a 'green' power source if we want (costs are a little higher). Since our power is based on hydropower we have a good, clean supply. Regardless, I'm all for reducing our energy footprint so we keep lights off all day. We have a skylight in the main bathroom (interior) so there is not even a need to turn it on during the day. At night I have a light on in the hall and one over the stove. We do keep our LED post light on all night. I don't think in the 10 years we've lived in our house that our energy bill has gone up $10-must be doing something right! However, I did tell DH I really want to upgrade our furnace system and put in an AC. We currently use a pellet stove to heat our home because the existing furnace is ancient and I won't use it. So if we do that, I bet our energy costs continue to lower by keeping consistent temps year round. (our furnace is natural gas).