When I looked into switching to a better food several years ago the links on the Tails of the Tundra Siberian rescue website had some great info. I've included a link below. *********************************************************** Also, on a different forum I came across a "food grading system". . Its a method of analyzing the ingredients of the food you feed and determining whether its a high quality/healthy kibble. You will need your kibble's list of ingredients, as found on the bag (or oftentimes their website). Please note, however, this is for ingredients ONLY.... so before feeding a pup be sure to look at the protein and fat and calcium and calories in the Guaranteed Analysis. Start with a grade of 100: For every listing of "by-product", subtract 15 points For every non-specific animal source ("meat" or "poultry", meat, meal or fat) reference, subtract 10 points If there are no specific meats or meat meals, subtract 25 points For every grain "mill run" or non-specific grain source, or grain "middlings", subtract 10 points If the food contains BHA, BHT, or ethoxyquin, subtract 15 points If the same grain ingredient is used 2 or more times in the first five ingredients (i.e. "ground brown rice", "brewers rice", "rice flour" are all the same grain), subtract 5 points for each occurrence If the protein sources are not (specific) meat meal and there are less than 2 meats in the top 3 ingredients, subtract 3 points If it contains any artificial colorants, subtract 5 points If it contains ground corn or whole grain corn, subtract 3 points (subtract 5 if corn is listed in the top 5 ingredients) If the food contains any animal fat other than fish oil, subtract 3 points If lamb is the only animal protein source (unless your dog is allergic to other protein sources), subtract 2 points If it contains soy or soybeans, subtract 5 points If it contains wheat (unless you know that your dog isnÂt allergic to wheat), subtract 2 points If it contains beef (unless you know that your dog isnÂt allergic to beef), subtract 1 point If it contains salt, subtract 3 points If it contains corn syrup, molasses, or other added sweetener, subtract 10 points Extra Credit: For every different specific animal protein source (other than the first one; count "chicken" and "chicken meal" as only one protein source, but "chicken" and "turkey" as 2 different sources - do not count egg, cheese, or other similar ingredients), add 1 point If the food contains 3 or less different mentions of grains (or other high-carb plant-based foods like potatoes), add 5 points If any of the meat sources are organic, add 5 points (if the number 1 ingredient is organic meat, add 10 points) If the animal sources are hormone-free and antibiotic-free, add 3 points If the food is baked not extruded, add 5 points If the food contains probiotics, add 3 points If the food contains fruit or vegetables (NOT corn or other grains), add 3 points If the vegetables have been tested for pesticides and are pesticide-free, add 1 point If the food contains barley or oats or oatmeal, add 1 point If it contains sunflower, hemp, flaxseed, or other polyunsaturated vegetable oils, add 3 points (add 5 if it is the #1 fat) If the vitamin and mineral sources are chelated, add 5 points 94-100+ = A 86-93 = B 78-85 = C 70-77 = D **************************************************** If this info helps even one person find a better quality food then it was worth the time I spent digging it up again.

Valerie, (Really, I DID, TRY to make this response short. Alas......) If you haven't been to the rose forums, hie thyself over there, post haste. Maybe also to the NC forum, if there is one. Ashdown Roses is in your part of the world --well, semi-close. They're in Campobello, SC. They have a luscious catalog & website, and specialize in antiques, hybrid teas, many others, including lots of very fragrant ones. The owner and his staff are very friendly & helpful and I'm sure would respond well to emails or actual phone calls. They can give you advice on best varieties for cuts, which are the most disease resistant, etc. Generally speaking, I've had to forego many antiques (went through that phase of being ONLY an antique rose aficianado---aka "snob"! LOL!), and am gravitating more towards hybrid teas. Antiques & David Austins have that lush look many of us adore, but the petal substance on many of those isn't strong enough to last on the walk from bush to house. Again, that's a general statement that certainly doesn't apply to ALL Antiques or David Austins. (I've heard that David Austin has developed a new line of "cuttable roses", and that they should be available in the US, MAYBE this year, 05, or next, or by 07. LONNNNG wait, but worth it, I'm sure. Ashdown & Chamblee's may be the primary vendor's for those cuttable David Austins. Ask.) I've had very good luck w/ New Dawn, climber, lots of thorns, very little spraying needed, if any. Pretty heavy spring bloom, very scant re-bloom. Also love my Mrs. B. R. Cant, a tea (predecessor class of the Hybrid Teas). She has gorgeous mauve-pink blooms, gets big and sprawly 8'x8', again, very little if any spraying. Semi-thorny. I'm falling in love w/ my David Austin Graham Thomas, beautiful yellow blooms in spring, not much repeat. All of these (and many other roses), may take up to 3 years in your garden to become their "best", but you should have some roses each year. A must have you should probably get is Belinda's Dream. Technically NOT an antique, but classed with them for some reason. It's on the list of Earth Kind Roses Dr. Steve George of Texas A & M Extention Offices has researched. His "Earth Kind" roses aren't IMMUNE to diseases and pests, but get so little that they might as well be, or what little disease they get they bounce right back from. Anyway, Belinda's Dream gets big also, say, 6' x 6', lots of BIG fragrant pink blooms. Last well on bush & vase. If it can handle Texas' heat & humidity, it should do well in NC. Ashdown has several roses on my big wish list; you could/should also check w/ the Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, TX, The David Austin websites, and Chamblee's Roses in Tyler, Texas. Other wishlist rose catalog companies are Heirloom Roses in Oregon?, Arena Roses in Ca or Oregon, (somewhere on the West Coast), and The Uncommon Rose, also out of the West Coast. Edmund's is also good,(west coast again!) but they cater primarily to Hybrid Tea lovers, and those who exhibit those hybrid teas. Not a fault, just not the Antiques or Austins. Heirloom and The Uncommon Rose both send small, own-root roses in what they call "tree bands". Good, rooted roses, just small. You'll have to pot them up in a gallon container for a year or so before they can go in the garden. I've ordered from The Uncommon Rose, but not from Heirloom. Heirloom has one of those luscious catalogs too! Edmund's & David Austin & Arena send primarily bare-roots; Ashdown, Chamblee's, and The Antique Rose Emporium will send usually own-root one or two gallon roses. Chamblee's is close, so I usually drive down there; I've ordered from The Antique Rose Emporium and got GREAT packaging, and, I've been to their store in San Antonio. Both good experiences. Haven't yet ordered from Ashdowns, but am longing too; haven't ordered from Arena in a few years, but got good service when I did. Carlton's is a good source for florist/show quality roses, and they also send small roses, some VERY small, but low price. Johnny Becnel (sp?) is a florist/show rose vendor, but I'm not sure how to get hold of him. Think he's in Louisiana. I haven't ordered from Carlton's or Becnel, but they too, will one day be on my lists! A couple of years ago I was trying to tell a knowledgeable rosarian at a Dallas nursery that I wanted to grow my roses organically; he may be more pro synthetic chemicals in general, and/or, he just had good advice: "You can grow them any way you want to for your own use, but if you are growing them as a crop, for bouquets, as a BUSINESS (!!!), you MUST spray, so your flowers will be perfect!" That was somewhat eye-opening to me. Reassuring? Practical? some of all. Not long after that, I DID start doing some black spot and/or powdery mildew sprayings, and as I did, I came across my New Dawn and Mrs. B. R. Cant who did not need ANY spray at all, thank you very much! I'm very irregular w/ any spray program (organic or synthetic), and even forget to fertilize the poor things often enough. Still, most of mine survive. I have an outbreak of Whiteflies this summer, and they've hit some of the roses and other plants fairly hard, plus, I'm in the beginning-middle stages of the annual grasshopper invasion, so I've been spraying w/ one of the Bayer products the last few days. The whiteflies have had plenty of time to build up numbers enough to be somewhat of a damaging threat, and no friendly organic natural predators are in the vicinity, so synthetic chemical spraying I do. OF course I've gone way too long. The key word I'm looking for in flower catalog copy nowadays is "incredible petal substance" , and/ or, "great on the show bench" whether it's for a rose/tulip/daffodil or other flower. I've found that that "petal substance/show bench" phrasology rings true w/ daffs and some of my roses. The thinner petalled cousins are still pretty, but may be too fragile for bouquet work. Don't forget, there ARE a lot of Hybrid Tea roses that DO have good fragrance in them. For a long while, fragrance was bred out of hybrid teas, but in recent decades the hybridizers are putting it back in. However, one of the women on the rose forums specifically raises the hybrid tea roses used by florists; she has a list of at least a 100 that she grows. She swears that the ones w/ fragrance have the shortest vase life. The ones w/ NO fragrance have the longest vase life. Something to do w/ the genetics, and maybe pollination. Once the flower attracts a bee by fragrance, the flower declines. I think her name is Deborah, she was in NC I think but has recently moved to Texas. Check for her name on the general (main) rose forum page of threads, then email her privately. She probably could give you a LOT of good info. Also, someone is always generating a question: "Which roses (hybrid teas, antiques, David Austins, etc) are best for vase life?" so you might find some of those questions fairly current. Enjoy your journey into rose catalogs! Even the poor ones are good, and the ones w/ knock-your-socks-off photography will make you swoon! Susi. PS: Of the three or four roses I mentioned, I like Mrs. B. R. Cant the best for buds & blooms. New Dawn has pretty blooms, but they shatter quickly (makes a GREAT "magazine cover rose" in bloom tho! LOL!), and my Belinda's Dream isn't old/big enough to give me consistant blooms. Graham Thomas does well, I think, but this was his 2nd year of starting to be great (#4 in the ground? can't remember), and his blooms may have happened when I didn't have use for yellow roses, or didn't have a customer, or whatever. Smells divine! You should also try to get Valencia, from Arena Roses. It's a great beautiful butterscotch/yellow hybrid tea rose. A co-worker of my daughter's raises a LOT of roses, and had provided each person in the office w/ home bouquets of Valencia the day I visited. It's gorgeous! Fragrance wasn't strong that day, but the roses were starting to fade. One more bit of advice: I'm learning this from my iris buying spree(s): if you have space and money, get your roses (or iris, daffs, lilies, etc) in 3's or more. Three of each variety you "must have". The David Austin people used to recommend buying & planting their roses in 3 of a kind. For the longest time "we all" thought that that was "just" a marketing ploy for them. Well, it is! But, it's also helpful for the cut flower grower to have 3 rose bushes producing multitudes of flowers, instead of one rose bush (or iris plant, or whatever!). Might be a "duh", but it took "me" a LONG while to figure out! NOW I'm done!

kateskouros, I've seen some of your choices/plans for your new house in other forums, and they're very nice. Are you sure you want to consider fiberglass for your shower? Perhaps there's some other thing your contractor is talking about, but to me, fiberglass implies those moulded shower things. There's nothing wrong with them, but I had the impression that you were going for something else. My husband did our Kerdi himself, it's not that big a deal. We used it in our steam shower and in those showers that weren't steam. Don't you want tile in your shower? And even if you do do tile on the shower walls, I wouldn't do a fiberglass pan either. I've always thought that just looks like an afterthought to do that. The shower floor should be of the same caliber as the walls. Kerdi is great stuff. But it's not the be all end all. There are plenty of showers in the world that don't have kerdi in them and survive. But it IS terrific stuff, and if you can persuade him to use it, and use it properly, you will end up with a better shower, I think.

OMG, I have seven swimsuits in my closet that I ordered online and are waiting for the pandemic to end so I can finally return them. I gave up. I doubt there will be any hot tub parties this summer anyway, I'll just keep my old suit and try again next year. Springroz I loved your "patterns to distract and fool the eye" comment. have you ever looked up dazzle ships? LOL!