Vacation is coming to an end. I did not wear 2 sleeveless tops and a pair of shoes and the bathing suit. Everything else was used...except the rain coats. They did their job though as the weather has been fabulous...I expected Budapest to be hot but it wasn't so didn't need sleeveless. I was the only one who wore full length to the palace, but I felt comfortable nonetheless. I was surprised that someone wore full length to the farewell...in fact people seemed to dress up more for that than the palace. I wore the shorts on deck and the scarves worked well for chilly mornings or buses or cathedrals. Lots of locals were wearing them. I did see everything though...shorts, capris, cargo pants, jeans, skirts, dresses, you name it. A lot of the men wore belted shorts with all combos of footwear including sneakers or sandals with socks. So the bottom line is comfort first, especially in footwear as you walk, walk, walk, and then walk a little further. But just like the US, anything goes.

Don't know if there is a perfect answer. But flushing more money down the toilet is not the big fix for sure. Lets see...the little guy has created too much debt, has lived beyond his or her means and can't pay their bills. So we need the bailout, so the little guy can borrow more money, continue to live beyond their means and create more debt that they can't pay? Sounds like the bailout, is more of a Ponzi scheme not meant to bailout the taxpayer, but instead reamout the taxpayer as it makes the rich...richer. Would an alcoholic be fixed if he inherited a whiskey factory? Would a limitless supply of free alcohol cure what ails him? Or would it just increase the sickness? We have learned nothing from our bailout mess. We can see this from the debate on how to water down the 'mark to market' accounting standards. Instead of restoring high financial and accounting standards, we are further relaxing them, in effect increasing the sickness that got us here. I would add that any accounting standard that discards mark to market accounting would be off my screen for investments. Even with mark to market, we have all these accounting lies. Can you imagine how it will be when asset values can be assigned by the holders of those assets with no reckoning with what the 'actual market value' of those assists are? One of CNBC's commentators chewed out Rick Santelli a while back telling him there is 'no time' for discussion of ideology in the bailout crisis. We must have the $700 billion NOW! At CNBC they seem to think that if money is just thrown at the problem all will be fine. If there is no time to change the underlying sickness in our broken capitalist system, how will more alcohol fix the alcoholic...or in this case more money fix the dishonest, greedy thrives of Wall Street CNBC? Every once in a while CNBC offers some words of wisdom other than the poker playing, crap shooting, compulsive gambler mentality of trading that you promote. Rick Santelli offered one such pearl of wisdom when he said the powers that be in America need to 'take their medicine like men' and stop trying to avoid the penalties of their financial shenanigans at all cost. To avoid taking their medicine is just making matters worse. Fix the underlying sickness before you loan out a dime. Take your medicine like men CNBC as well as thieves of Wall Street. Don't give taxpayer money out, not a dime - loan with high grade collateral and interest. But only loan if absolutely necessary. But don't force the taxpayer to buy toxic waste that no one in their right mind would buy. Put the rich, greedy, lying bastards of Wall Street on the line and not the taxpayer that can hardly make ends meet. Paulson had over 30 years on Wall Street. Paulson is said to be worth half a billion dollars and we never heard a peep of warning out of him until the crisis was full blown. This seems to be a case of honor dies where the interest lies.

Christine Yup, I love that picture --though I would have made the susans at least an inch bigger in diameter and maybe more so they snugged close to the posts. I can't do mine like that, though, because the posts are in the front corner. In one of those flashes of imbecility, I thought I could use pie cut susans around the post. DUH. It wouldn't even START to turn. But I can get nearly 17'' diameter susans in those dead corners, which will be a huge improvement over the unreachable depths behind the post. I just thought of something. In corner shelves like those pictured with no center post, if the susans are made as large as possible and then D cut in a straight line from post to post, access to the contents would be better because protruding shelves above and below would not obscure a rotated shelf. I REALLY wish I didn't have those corner posts!! Anyway, this is an EASY project. Just cut a plywood circle, screw in 4 screws to attach the bearing, and it's done--except for your fav. chore, painting. But there is no need to paint the bottom, and I'll put cushy cupboards lining on the top, so only the edges need painting.

Thanks @GardenHo_MI_Z5! My photo taking skills have definitely improved over the years It helps that my youngest took photography in school and has given me advice. I stand as close as possible (some insects are shyer than others), and then take photos with the zoom feature and then I take a lot of photos. I mean 20-30 even 40 if I think I haven't gotten what I want. And I'll stand there for a long time. Last photos of July! A view of part of the garden that runs along the street, looking from the back. Wool Carder Bee (Anthidium maculosum) The middle right of the yellow and orange bed. The columbine was planted late this year so it didn't flower but the plants are humongous. I was hoping my hibiscus would have opened in time for a July photo but alas, not quite ready.