I just finished "Dog On It", one of Mary's recommendations. The premise sounded sort of cheesy, but it was so well written from the point of view of the dog. Chet -- the dog -- will be thinking deep thoughts about the case and suddenly be sidetracked by a cheerio on the floor or the scent of a cat. Very clever. If you like books about cheese making, try "Blessed are the Chessemakers" by Sarah-Kate Lynch. It's fiction with a touch of magic which I'm finding I like in a story. Our book group recently read "Water for Elephants". It was one I would never have picked up on my own and I loved it. The group also picked "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" which I did not read. Little boys being killed in concentration camps is not my cup of tea. I'm also reading "Night Night Little Pookie" three or four times a day to the year old grandson. He likes it as much as I do!

laura_lea and okfella, I don't recognize you and just wanted to say Hi! Glad you are on board. We are getting so close to thirty, and I have some friends and family who want in. I think we're there and there's no reason to stop. I'll be checking in even less often than usual. I caught a virus this morning clicking on a link to... get this..low sugar plum jelly. What is wrong with people? The computer shop is backed up, so I'll limp along at the library until they can take care of me. Diane, You and I have a lot more in common than you realize. There are so many times I'm in the garden and I think, I need to email Diane. Maybe this week I'm glad I'm not in your address book? Getting on a hacker's list AND getting infected all in one week might send me over the edge. My mom keeps telling me women are like tea bags. You don't realy know how strong they are until they in hot water. I'm tired of being a teabag. Graphs, charts, lists and inventories make me feel, momentarily, like I have some control on this ride. It's a false illusion, but it gives me some sanity!!! Whatever works. The bonus is, I can make people like SGM laugh, and that's a good thing.

Sounds wonderful! I'm glad you enjoyed your dinner party. See, if your ever worried about a dinner party again, just put those chocolatinis on the menu! I should have mentioned martinis when you were worried. A friend of mine was having a dinner party and made a big batch of appletinis to go with the appetizers. They were such a hit she made a couple more batches. At 9:00 she realized that she had never started dinner, and wasn't actually sure she was capable of cooking at that point, so she made more appletinis and had her husband call for pizza. All the guests spent the night sleeping on various chairs, couches or the floor. They thought is was they best party ever.

Hi Paula, We're having a great onion year. About half the short days are harvested and curing but the other half acts as though they are not interested in flopping over at all. Meanwhile, the necks on the intermediate types are just beginning to soften, allowing the foliage to flop over. The three long day varieties stopped new growth long ago at the 12 to 15 leaf range. I suspect they cannot make more leaves than that, so they are just sitting there waiting for the right daylength or whatever to occur that will let them finish up. They are starting to bulb. I think that we'll have either 7 or 8 of our 9 varieties harvested before the end of June. The ninth one, Copra, tends to run a bit later than the rest. Since that one is for prolonged storage, I'm not in any hurry to harvest them anyway. I've noticed from various FB photos that lots of folks far north of me are harvesting onions already, and to my eye, a lot of those don't look like they even reached the softneck stage before being harvested. Some of them have had such thick necks that they resemble leeks! That sort of drives me crazy, but I don't say anything because they are not asking a question like "did I harvest my onions too early?" or "would my onions have been twice as large as they are now if I had waited until the proper time to harvest them?" I just bite my tongue. When someone does ask about when to harvest, I do tell them about the soft neck stage and proper curing for the longest storage possible. I'm not sure I understand the urge to harvest things far too early, other than perhaps they are eager to put a succession crop in that same space if they have limited gardening space. Well, I understand when farmers or market growers harvest earlier to get the onions to market because early onions are money in the bank, but I don't understand when home gardeners do it. I planted too many onions as always, but we use so many in cooking and canning that I suspect we'll use up every one of them. Because we never got really cold after the onions were planted, they grew like gangbusters and most have 12-15 leaves, so we're going to get nicely sized onions even though our rainfall this year has been only about 60% of average. I'm glad your plums are ready. Ours froze while in bloom or shortly after bloom so there won't be any new plum jelly this year, but I made two years' worth last year so we won't run out any time soon. Chickens do complicate one's life, and I love them anyway and always will have them. They are so adorable. Our chickens get used to me coming out of the house with the compost bucket in my hand (especially when canning is producing tons of waste material) and follow me right to the pile, happily clucking away as they dig and scratch through whatever yummy stuff I just tossed on the pile. Sometimes in the afternoons when I'm in the garden working, the chickens stand outside the fence as close to me as they can get and work through the grass looking for bugs. I think they are hoping I'll toss them a tasty caterpillar or something every now and then (and I do). Since chickens are not garden-friendly, they are not allowed in the garden when there's crops growing, but they loiter around its fence constantly. If I walk up to the house and forget to close the gate, the garden is full of chickens when I come back. Apparently they watch very carefully for such opportunities to infiltrate the fenced compound. Luckily, they aren't in there long enough to do any damage---mostly they just dig and scratch in the mulched pathways, searching for bugs. We also have one chicken who loves canned cat food. She'll hear me call the cats to come indoors, which I often do while beating on a cat food can with a spoon...because nothing makes the cats come in quickly more than the prospect of being fed. That chicken comes running with the cats and tries to come inside with them every day. Sometimes I'll take her a spoonful of canned catfood just because she loves it so, but I'm not letting her come into the house. Dawn