Hi Stardust! My friend, Storygardener aka Beverly does the central Ohio swap (I help.) We may be coming to yours. We'll have to see as time gets closer. You can check out how we do it on our thread, "Central Ohio Plant Swap and Pot Luck May 15" This is our fourth year and out way seems to work really well. Everyone has a good time and goes home with something and a full belly. We don't worry about what folks bring for the lunch. I figure that the stress of keeping track of how many of what kind of dish is coming is more of a problem than eating dessert for lunch. (One meal of sugar hasn't caused me to suffer malnutition yet!) We do a round robin swap so that everyone gets at least one thing that they really like. You can read the details on our thread. You are also welcome to come to ours to see how we do it. We have folks from as far away as Michigan and Pittsburgh come. Let us know if you have any specific questions. I hope that we can make it to your swap! Happy Spring! Mimi Hope that we can come.

Congrats. They are such good bug hunters and fun to watch. Just love my Phoebes. I've had them nest in my old open shed every year for 12 years. Now a tree fell on the shed and we built a new one so I keep the doors closed. I put some nesting shelves up so I hope they still come back! Cathy

Wow, you've all given fantastic information. Thank you! I wish we had a month to visit all these lovely-sounding spots. I've traveled through Germany but not Berlin; however, I think we'll save that for another time. We haven't purchased our airline tickets, so we can do outbound to anywhere and return from anywhere. We could therefore start in one location, head to Vienna for work/pleasure and then continue on. I think I can covince my hubs to do Vienna plus 10 days ... so 13 days total. I don't dare say 2 weeks or he'll say he can't be gone from work that long (even though he totally can). I'll say 12 days. Ha. Maybe something like this: Depart US Morning arrival in Prague - stay 2 nights? Drive to Vienna (direct route shows 3.5 hr drive which we could do in the morning; if we stop in Cesky Krumlov and the other small towns suggested on detour route, we may need to allocate a full day. Hmmm) Vienna - 3 nights? Drive to Bled (4 hours) - 1 night? Drive to Split/islands (5.5 hours) - number of nights? Drive to Mostar (2 hours) - stay overnight or continue on? Depart from Dubrovnik (2 hours) - number of nights? Return flight from Dubrovnik? What do you think? Specifically, we have to be in Vienna mid-afternoon Sunday through Tuesday evening. We probably would stay overnight Tuesday for a total of 3 nights, and then drive to Bled (or wherever) Wednesday morning ... unless we should spend more time in Vienna. Our 2.5 days will include great sightseeing and fantastic dining with our business hosts. Sochi, how much time would you allocate to each location? In the time we have, should we try to fit in more? What would you do? We don't mind a bit being on the go go go. lizzard, I had no clue Budweiser is a Czech thing. I do have a beer lover, but despite the historical significance, one Budweiser tour in a lifetime is really all I ever need. Ssshh, we won't tell my husband.

we just had the same thing happen. The nest is high-on a rafter under our porch roof. Parents have been feeding like crazy and they were getting big, but after a weekend out of town I looked up yesterday to see if they had fledged while we were gone and saw the tops of their heads so thought it would be a few more days. But today the heads hadn't moved and now there is no movement in the nest and the parents have disappeared. There seems to be no disturbance of the nest and it isn't near any kind of toxic exhaust. The nest, which was a holdover from prior years, was crawling with mites and I put some DE in and around it when the eggs were in it; I'm afraid I may have caused a chain reaction of some kind? I'm bewildered. Any thoughts?