Lots of times!! I made my DS's 1st birthday cake & it ended up with plastic train on it. I was glad it was only family seeing it!! I took lessons on cake decorating & got so I made all the cakes for weddings, showers etc at church. Crafting or decorating is learning how & having a good eye & sometimes even that doesn't work. If you have some 20 or 24 gauge wire & some beads(old necklace that broke etc) you could put about 8 wires with beads every inch with a loop on both sides of bead going across leave center area plain& wire on heart thereby filling in the heart kind of like a spider web but nicer,where wires all meet in center of heart add a couple of 1/2 marbles 1 to each side, Put a wire on top & hang in the wind for a sun catcher!! I was given some afghans to finish by GF's husband after she died. Well, she was right handed & I'm left, normally not a problem only I was supposed to start where I usually end. I had to find friends to make them up & they did & used them. If I had refused them, her hubby would have thrown them away. My crochet looks different but I wasn't going to throw them out. They were more than 1/2 done with the rest of yarn to match. Now they all remember Lora Mae every time they cuddle up in winter. I got some other things I could use & did. So it turned out well. You can use any color on the wires, about 4 beads to each wire, 2 before center(leave free for the 1/2 marble to be glued on) 2 going to far side of heart. About 32 beads total!! Good luck in whatever you do with it! Jan

Sheila, Bananas can and do fruit in pots. BUT, the pots need to be very large, you'll probably need to trim back any pups to keep the energy in the main pseudostem, AND they'll likely take longer in containers to fruit than when planted directly in the ground for the growing season. For some reason bananas always do better in the ground. If you want it to fruit in a pot, don't let it ever 'die back' from a hard freeze. That could kill any flower that is developing in the main pseudostem. The flowers actually come from the corm, but near flowering, they quickly grow up thru the pseudostem and emerge at the top of the plant. It may take 3 growing seasons for them to fruit in ground (considering that you dig for inside storage for the winter). If in a pot year-round, it could take years longer because the plants grow slower. I currently have a Dwarf Cav and Brazilian Tall in my garage. I dug them and potted them before frost. I trimmed them up to the last three leaves before I brought them in. They will resume their fast growth once they are planted back in the ground in May. This will be their third growing season. Hopefully I'll see some flowering this summer.

Thanks Kim. I wish we had made it to Perfect Perennials and Herr's. We will make a date for next summer for sure. I'm excited to see your seedlings bloom too. This was my first year with seedlings blooming and it was amazing. I have at least 10 that are keepers for now, and I can't wait to see what they do next year. Now if I could just win the lottery and get some acreage to put all these seedlngs I want to try. I've made at least 2000 seed pods this summer, and have started to harvest and dry. I'm almost ready to start selling them on the LA. What a job. It is a labor of love, as it would never pay all the time and energy that goes into it, of course, unless I create the next great new and different daylily. I know, dream on... Nina

folkvictorian - The companies obviously want to limit their costs. It's possible that there are other locations where they can tap into the line but perhaps you land is the easiest. Or they may have already been turned down by other homeowners and you're next on the contact list. Lizbeth's post reminded me that the Gas company that wanted to run the new line on our property was doing it as part of a project to replace and enlarge the old lines. They wanted our property because it would have been easier and cheaper for them to run a new line and then cap off the old one rather then replace the existing line they already had. She is right when she says they promise everything and downplay any negatives. Four years ago the Susquehanna Power Company wanted to run high power lines on 200' towers through our property. These lines would carry electricity from the nuclear power plant in Berwick, PA to New Jersey and New York. No one in our town even gets electricity from this company. They held a series of public meetings that were well planned out. When we entered the meeting room they had executives placed at tables all around the room to 'answer' our questions. They never spoke to the attendees as a group but kept all discourse to one to two people in a conversational tone. Rather smart on their part. That way no one in the audience could stand up and raise objections and galvanize the group. It took several months and many phone calls to find out that the towers would be 400' from my home and that I would be able to hear the constant 'hum' emitted from the lines. The towers would have run almost through the middle of my 135 acres. And it's not over yet - while the power company and the state PUC have selected an alternative route which uses the existing utility right of way, the National Park Service is objecting - they don't want the power company to cross the Delaware River on park land even though the power lines are already there, they're just on shorter towers. What's ironic is that the park only exists because the Federal government wanted to build the Tocks Island Dam on the Delaware River in the 1950's. After acquiring thousands of acres and eradicating the town of Dingman's Ferry the whole thing was canceled and the Delaware Water Gap National park was created. My examples are probably way more involved than what you're experiencing. I guess I relate them because it might help to know what can happen to the average landowner.