It sounds like relations with your brother aren't so great, either, or else he has a bad conscience about his wife's behavior. For the sake of family peace, I'd be tactful, but I'd be clear and firm: express a willingness to share cuttings and explain how to get them to root, but make it clear that your sister-in-law is not to take cuttings without your permission, so that she doesn't damage rare and vulnerable plants. It might help if you explain that these roses didn't come for the nearest big box store, as lagomorphmom said. If you can work in an implication that she'll have a better garden in the long run if she has you as a friend and gardening ally rather than as an enemy, so much the better, but unfortunately a lot of people don't understand this line of reasoning. Good luck!! Melissa

After the first winter the first Euc scoparia endured, its top was frozen off. It was really small then. Almost 2 1/2 years later that Euc is over 30' tall and thriving. Hope it's OK through this. Planted another Euc scoparia 1 year 2 months ago, narrower leaves, and it got through last winter with no damage at all. Have a lot of Eucs that are rare, from Frank, but he moved back to Ohio and I'm not sure how to get more since Ian isn't down this way much. The Euc crenulata is still robustly flowering and growing really fast. Grown about 6' in the last 3 months. Thought it was a subcrenulata so planted it in the wrong location. None of my Eucs are able to be covered with anything anymore: too tall. Have a nitens that is going totally bonkers but is still slender and tender. A camphora that is over 30' tall, growing like a weed, extremely beautiful. Volcanica that is robustly growing. Bogong that is reedy and growing too fast, can't hold itself up. Spinning wheel that is shooting up up and away. On the other hand, the gorgeous Pinus monticola, native western white pine, hard to find, got it from an Xmas tree farm, died. Will try a little one. Really love these trees but my yard may be too shady and wet for it in the long run. More watering like a maniac tomorrow. At least the moisture stays put unlike summer where the next day the heat has evaporated all my hard work. Rainfall is down so drastically here that I fear this freeze will finish off a lot of neighborhood trees. Ppl think it still rains cats and dogs so never think to go water during a drought. They see the pavement wet and don't realize it misted just enough to give the appearance of wet but that never made it past the grass blade tops. I planted only water-loving Eucs here :-) And some that a very kind soul gave us for free, that I am not sure will make it or not -- a batch of 12 Australian plants that have not done much of anything so I'm not sure if they'll adapt or not. Going to take a bunch of pictures tomorrow to have memories of these magnificent trees just in case they expire in the winter weather. Have read that sometimes Eucs that freeze come back from the roots.

Hi Meldy723, I am going through something similar. I just turned 42 last week and haven't had my cycle for about 3 mos. I took an hpt. Came back neg. So I put it in the back of my mind since last year, my doc said I was in "peri" which was disappointing as I've been divorced for 8 years and was looking forward to starting my life with my husband and having another child. But I couldn't shake why I've missed 3 mos. of cycles with nothing. Could I have gone from peri to menopause within a year. So,went to the doc, who took labs and urine. Urine was neg. & labs said my estrogen levels were low and so was my thyroid, so told me to come back for more labs. This time, they did a blood test for preg which came back neck and my AMH level was low. I was prepared again to accept that I was not pregnant but then I started having other symptoms, weight gain, sore nipples, milky discharge. Ok, so I began doing research, even though it was online, research is research as I compared findings from experts and forums. What I found is that there are many women our age who have experienced this, negative testing over a period of several months and with the doctor telling them they aren't preg. Usually they haven't had a physical which would put all the wondering and doubt to rest. I didn't have a physical b/c the doc I was seeing isn't my normal doc. So I've opted to wait. The short of all of this is that you could be...we could be pregnant, even with negative tests. Nothing is 100%. There is always room for error. The only thing that will ease my mind is having a physical which I have scheduled on Aug. 6th. It is very emotionally draining, no matter what your desire is. I just believe we have to educate ourselves and allow our minds to go to a place of peace that it will all work out for the best in the end. If I am, which I feel that I am, because I can feel little twitches in my belly in places where I haven't before. Having been pregnant before, I know the feeling and I don't recall gas feeling like that. But you know, as women, there are just times when you sense something and you just can't seem to let it go...for me, that's now. What has happened with you, Meldy723, since May? What have you discovered?

Wow, we only went a couple of weeks in our new house before our appliances were delivered. I can't imagine months or years! We used a lot of paper plates, cooked on the grill (1 burner) and MW, I also bought a 2-burner (solid burners - nice) buffet thing at Walmart but ended up returning it since we didn't have the counterspace. The problem was having place to put it since we didn't have a countertop on our island, so we were cooking on 3ft of counter b/t the sink (at least we had that) and the hole for the range. The other 27" on other side of hole wasn't much use with no landing place anywhere near it. We ate on a folding "butterfly" table sitting on folding chairs for 3 months. The hardest part was going w/o a fridge - both when we moved, and in 2006 when fridge died in our old house the first day of school. We had to rely on a couple of coolers, lots of ice, and neighbors with space in fridge we could run over every other day to get our groceries from to put in cooler. If it had been longer than a week or two each time to get delivery, I would have bought undercounter fridge.