Hi Anna, Do know your frustrations. Doubt I've seen 10 butterflies total this year around my place despite having many different nectaring and larval food plants. And only a couple of moths at my lights at night. Even when I go to town to run errands I don't see any at all. Worst lep season I have seen in the 46+ years that I have been doing Lepidoptera. If I felt up to it I'd drive the 100 miles RT to the mountains and see if anything was happening up there. So my newest digital camera that MissSherry turned me onto is not getting much use. Larry

I've done major weedings at all the schools i've worked at, and it's amazing what's on the shelves! My favourite is one called something like "The World of the Future" which has a good description of what a fax machine would be like. You'd write your letter on special paper and put it in a special envelope and bring it to the post office. There they'd put it into the fax machine, which would take it out of the envelope and send it to a fax machine at the post office at the other end. That machine would put your letter into an evelope and the post office would deliver it to the recipient! Several years ago, i had weeded so much that people commented on how empty the shelves were, but i knew that somewhere down the line we'd be getting the books from another school that was going to close. That happened a couple of years ago and now my shelves are full again. One of the difficult parts of automation was sending all those catalogue cards away to the automation company. Thirty years of work getting put into the mail! Ack!! I really sweated over the first batch that went, but it got easier after that. Another thing that happened was that three schools in Dryden closed and merged into one brand new one. I was working in one of the schools that closed and we - the three library techs - had to coordinate our cataloguing so that the cards would all match well enough and be easier to be put into the automated programme. I never realized how absolutely anal i could be about some things and there were a lot of emails flying back and forth about how things should be done! LOL Some things i refused to change! Awful, eh? Fortunately the three of us are still friends. We set up the new library too and had to put the barcodes on all the books. It was quite the job, especially as the new school was still under construction and we had to wear hardhats into and out of the school and if we went anywhere else in the school - like to find which washroom was functional that particular day. And no electricity for quite a few weeks too! What an adventure! Connie, we have links to all the school libraries on the Board's website, so we can see who has a book that we want. And we just email back and forth - "A teacher needs x number of copies of such-and-such book. Anyone have it?" I'd tell you to check my library out but my public catalogue has been down for several days - i screwed something up doing an update and the tech hasn't been able to come out and fix it. :D Syreeta, we've always had give-aways after a major weeding. Kids love free books - books they'd never take off the shelves otherwise! LOL

My farmers market day and the other vendor's sales were the same. Lots of people, but no one buying anything much over $2. I sell cookies at 50c each and they usually buy 3 or 4, a half dozen, or more. Yesterday - ONE cookie per customer, and no more. I discounted my jams and jellies at $1 off to celebrate my birthday for the month of June and people bought the little $2.25 jars of 4 ounces and didn't even look at the bargain 9 ounce jars at $5. I thought I'd phase out those little jars (to me - a sample taste size - it's only a half cup for Pete's sake - two pieces of bread size - and well, maybe!) but I'm rethinking that now. Perhaps people are thinking cheap, not value. My dad sold stuff at a flea market in California years and years ago. He told me that if he had stuff for $1 he'd sell a hundred. If he had stuff for $5 he sold just a few. It wasn't value - it was price. Are we back to that? Teresa - I started playing the mountain dulcimer when I married my DH 10 years ago. He handcrafted it; he's a guitar player and custom woodworker; so he built it "because", but never intended to use it. I never could sing; failed at playing folk music on guitar because my hands had surgery eons ago; and the only other thing I could play was the radio. LOL The hammered dulcimer takes more coordination than does the mountain, which I sorely lack, but may just be your vehicle. If you need to make music - I'm behind you 10000%. Anyone with a music need should try every instrument. You'll never know, as my totally music un-gifted son said, "that a harmonica can set you free". Nancy

I'm 99% sure the rose I had never heard of before was called "Cornet". The name tag listed it as a hybrid perpetual. I'm having trouble reading it, even "embiggened," (so cute, Virginia) on the laptop. I found it to be a solid medium/soft pink, although helpmefind's description of Cornet say's pink with a red shading. Is anyone familiar enough with Cornet to confirm or deny? Lisa