Okay--we have one here at the store, came from my Grandma's funeral 16 years ago-"irene" as she is known is about 8 feet tall, after being "chopped" down 3 or 4 times, she got ot 12 feet tall like a Palm Tree and slowly bent her head over 1 day and came down on top of one of my employees head. He yelled ,Get that "weed" off of me and I thought he said get "irene" off of me--thus her name. Anyway, she all of a sudden has about 20 "spikes" (look the color of leopard spots) coming out of rolled up leaves all over the top of her. What the heck are they- in 16 years, she's never done that, Even her "babies" which were repotted during the chopping are about 3 ft now and don't have these things. What are they??? Help????

Kay, Sorry to hear that and I know what you mean. About 2 weeks ago I started using a method posted by Bry84 that he used to kill bindweed, which is also a vine. I made sure to dig a few sprigs of it out of the ground before I started killing it because I love the passionvine's flowers and their smell and would like to still have one here..BUT in a pot and not in the ground ever again! If you ever decide that you want to get rid of yours, you could try that method. The results here are looking good after just the two weeks. Instead of spraying a Glyphosate weed killer (Roundup or a generic of it) on the foliage like you normally would, you gather a bunch of vines, put them in some type of container (I'm using big plastic coffee cans...after using the coffee, of course :) and sit the container down into the ground a little so it can't spill. Then you pour the Roundup (I'm using a generic form)/water solution in the container until it's not quite all the way to the top. Finally, tape plastic over the top so that no animal will try to drink the stuff. Maybe it also helps heat it up in the container and makes the solution more harmful to the plant (just guessing). From what I read, if you would do the usual method of weed killing by spraying the foliage, the top growth of bindweed (in this case passionvine) would die down, but the root would still be active and it would only be a matter of time before you'd have new shoots popping up all over the place again. Apparently when you're dealing with something like passionvine (with that underground root system that it has), it's probably best to use a method that lets the glyphosate slowly get to the roots and over a period of time, not just a quick zap of the leaves. Having the vines in the glyphosate-filled (almost) container should allow you to effectively kill the passionvine because it kills the root system instead of just the leaves. I have hope for it working because the passionvine is really yellowing, and I see that shoots about a yard away from the original plant have wilted (and I know that I didn't accidentally get any weed killer on them or try to pull them out), so I really think that I'll have success with this method. Yay! If you want to try this method, I don't think that it would matter if you can't gather up every single vine to put in the liquid, but I suppose the more you have in it the better/faster the results. If you have a lot of growth, I think that you could trim it down if that would make it more manageable to put in the glyphosate. It looked overwhelming here to try to get most of the vines in containers of the glyphosate all at once, so I did it on 3 separate days. Also, the vines aren't all the same length, so I waited for some to grow more so they'd be long enough to stuff down into the containers. Below is the link to the GW weed forum thread that describes this method (maybe it's better than what I have explained...and I wanted to give credit to the person). You'll have to scroll down a little ways until you get to his name. Best of luck if you decide to get yours out of the ground (and in a pot if you want to have it at all). I really think that this is do-able! :) Cathy Here is a link that might be useful: Method to try to kill passionvine

Thank you for the condolences. I am having a hard time with grief moreso than when I lost both my parents. I know it has been only a few days but I am really going to miss Lizzie's late night calls from work. I was with her when she died at 3:55 am. I had sat in the recliner just after joking with her about the show we had watched 3 times that day and said I would change the channel at 4 am. I sat down just before 3:50 am and must have nodded right off. I woke at 3:55 and I knew she was gone, the noise of her not breathing was what woke me up. Either that or she tapped me on the shoulder as she was leaving. I am glad she wasn't alone when she died. Lizzie worked as a nurse until the end of March but kind of figured her cancer had spread because of the weight loss since Christmas and she hadn't been able to eat anything. Lizzie had stopped taking her chemo drug "femara" because of the aches and pains and being a nurse she knew the fluid buildup in her abdomen was not a good sign. She had double breast cancer while working in Saudi Arabia the same year my Mom was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. She just turned 65 in March. Started chemo again in April, was finally admitted to the hospital to be hooked up to an intravenous bag of food which she tried to avoid having and then she got a blood infection and was too weak for chemo and finally on Wednesday she decided no more treatments or invasive procedures. She ate ice chips and took anti nausea medication and the odd pain med as needed. She had humour right up to the last day. When one of her nursing co-workers came to visit her on Thursday I told her it was Nurses Week and she said she knew that. Her friend said "Lizzie and I were going to go out" and Lizzie said "rats" LOL Patti, my oldest sister Marjorie is the one I usually talk about. She had inflammatory breast cancer over 22 years ago and then had another type of breast cancer last summer and had a mastectomy. She also has other health problems but you wouldn't know it to see her. She is 72 years old, travels back and forth to St. Louis just about every month and I keep telling her she is going to out live us all. Bahaaha, she gets on my last nerve sometimes but I sure would miss her. LOL She drives me nuts. LOL Lizzie and I shared a bedroom until I was in my 20's and she was only 10 years older than me so we were closer. Marjorie isn't like the rest of us. LOL While reading the rough draft of Lizzie's obit I kept saying something was wrong, I kept reading the names of my siblings - Marjorie, David, Donald, Raymond, Anne Louise and Paul. I read that over and over and to myself I said there aren't enough names and couldn't figure out who was missing. Then it dawned on me Lizzie's name was missing in the birth order, her name should have been after David's. That is when it really hit me, that she was gone. I have been crying off and on most of the day today. Okay, I feel better about my decision on the stove. I have always had an electric stove and the almond coloured one I do have still works but the door doesn't shut/lock properly so I can't use the self cleaning feature and I am sure heat is lost when I bake but I knew how to compensate for the temps. This stove is white so it will match my refrigerator. I was going to get the convection oven because I do a lot of baking but I couldn't rationalize spending $200 more for that feature. I would love a gas stove but I am used to cooking with electricity and I would have to run a gas line into the kitchen and I wouldn't have been able to vent out the exhaust because my stove is on an inside wall. My niece is getting my sisters expensive pots and pans and she is going to give me hers - I think they are Lagostino. I am still using some of my Mom's 70 year old Wearever pots. I was given a set of non stick frying pans for Christmas and the bottom of them are not smooth and are actually quite sharp if you run your hands across the bottom so they would definitely scratch the surface and Billy my friend the salesman said that type of aluminum used in those pans is soft and can melt if used on high heat which would really damage. I will continue to use my Le Cruset dutch oven though even though it is grooved on the bottom. Billy said heavy flat bottomed pots and pans are more suitable for this type of cooktop, and preferably stainless steel. He even said copper bottomed pots and pans were also not advisable. He also told me to get a thermometer to measure the oven because sometimes it could be off a bit with this type of stove. Some of the ceramic topped ovens he showed me were over $2000. I really like the one that came with a griddle feature but way out of my price league. LOL I still wanted to be able to buy my ereader. LOL Time will tell. My old stove goes out to the curb tomorrow. In with the new out with the old. I guess I won't be making omelets ala Julia Child anymore. I will have to get used to lifting my pan off the burner to shake the eggs to keep them loose. Anne

I'm confused, do you think the stink lingers because it's built in or do you think it would have happened with any microwave, but you'd just get rid of it if it was a cheapo on the counter? I've only had ones that sat on the counter and ones that were built in over the range with the fan for the range. Hated the location of both because I don't like appliances on the counter and want a hood rather than over range micro. However I never noticed one being more stinky that the other and we use ours a lot, almost daily for heating water, steaming veggies and reheating. I've made popcorn and it lingers and bacon which is even worse (banned hubby from that), but it eventually wet away without any major clean up. I've scorched popcorn, but never torched anything so I'm just trying to figure out is the problem due to the degree of torching or the style of micro? I planned to find a spot for a built in in my remodel, but if it's something about the style that makes the stink linger I wouldn't want that. Please enlighten me! Thanks.