Did a big variety of planting today because just got tomatoes to set on my first two buckets a couple of days ago! Was gone for a month to UP michigan looking for cooler weather. The 2 buckets were on automatic watering in Al's mix with a few minor differences. Had a neighbor taking care of 3 clay pots with my next set of tomatoes, she did a good job with them and I promptly lost them in 5 gal buckets with Al's mix, man when it is hot and dry, you can not leave them from morning till night or they are goner's. Hope your's came through OK Tom! Have my next stage of tomatoes coming along, 1/2 in 8" clay pots and 1/2 still in the 3oz cups. Cleaned my 2 raised beds today and put seeds in my original column concrete block containers. Used lot's of worm castings as I had a good batch when I got home from North. Silia, I have a black jungle butterbean that is growing very large, blooms, but not setting any beans. Is that normal? Tom, how is your FIL's garden coming. He always gets good produce before I can. My mango crop was "zilch" this summer, weird weather. Folks closer to the coast had a bumper crop this year. bernie

Finally! So glad to see you two back on here! This place was starting to feel like a "ghost town" and it isn't even Halloween yet! LOL Both Bebe and Belle posted a couple of times, and I see we have a "newbie" this morning so that should be fun if Kay will come share pics and ideas with us. Punk are you all finished at the Fair? Ours runs for a month is why I asked. Did you have someone run the store while you were at the fair? I'm so glad you had lots of sales. Anj, that sounds like a wonderful time for the kids--so nice when there's lots of room and they can release all that energy and make all the noise they want as well. I agree, the unpacking and laundry are the least fun part of any trip! Ugh! I will never understand why there has to be so much homework! Seems to me that the classes should be long enough to do the required work, and when the kids leave school, they should be able to have the rest of the day free. Who wants to work all day, then get out and go home and have to do more????? And the parents can't do what they want either because they have to see that the homework gets done! Something is wrong with this picture IMHO! I went to a craft show yesterday. Just love the atmosphere of them. Everything was so pretty and so many darling things. Loved all the fall decor--not a bit of Christmas, think there will be another show for that. I bought a few things but not much--too expensive for my retirement budget! There were lots of painted metal items, one witch that was cut out of metal, painted face and arms, then had cloth strips tied on for her long skirt. Lots of cute details on her--I really wanted one, but didn't want to spend that much. Saw lots of painted signs, some with really "bold" writing that wasn't that "perfect" at all, yet they looked good for a Halloween sign. Some really cute things for the garden too--wish they allowed picture taking so I could share pics with you. And all the florals were so pretty, I noticed lots of acorns in them too--and you know I love acorns. Anyway, now I'm in the "mood" and "motivated" again. I cut out a couple things last night, and plan to cut a few more today so I can get busy painting again. I think I'm happiest when I have a project to work on. :o) Punk, I wasn't real happy with my roses on my cake tin, but overall I think it turned out okay. I keep wanting to do more shabby, fluffy roses, but the one stroke rose that I learned first keeps popping up! LOL You two rest up, and I'll hope that Belle and Bebe pop in here again soon. And yes, Anj, retirement is wonderful! I keep pinching myself to make sure I am not dreaming--no more deadlines, employee problems, computer conversions, customer complaints--don't miss any of those! Never thought I'd make it to this point--so I'm making sure I remember to enjoy it! ;o) (However, you do realize that dishes, laundry, and housecleaning never stop!) LOL Luvs

Sounds like a good bargain for Corelle..I have the "Iris Shadow" pattern for everyday use and love it. I ordered matching drinking glassed direct from the Corelle Distributor(World Kitchen in Green Castle, Pa.) The serice is speedy and packed extremely well and they are delivered right to my door in about 3 days.. One thing to say for white dishes, you can add color to your table settings by using color tablecloths, napkins and flowers and keep the cost of having many sets of dishes to store. Check out the decorating blogspot called Starfish Cottage in Fla. The blog owner is Kristy and she's an Interior Designer and she tends to add her color in the table linens, flowers, accessories and sticks to white dishes. You can make any table look beautiful by simplicity. Sometimes when you add too many dishes of different colors, patterns, it makes the tablescape look too busy and the viewer has too much to try to see and absorb. We downsized in 2005 from a large home that had lots of storage space to a smaller home all on one level with minimum storage space. There's another reason why using just one set of white dishes and adding color in other ways is important. I didn't think much of it until I saw Kristy's decorating blogspot this week. Makes a lot of sense.

Guys, I thought I'd let you know my Labor Day weekend finally came to an end yesterday. My friend who is a plumber came and crawled under the house. 2 trips to Lowe's and 6 hours later, he cut out 7 unnecessary, leaking couplings, replacing them with three, and straight pipe runs, and fixed 4 different leaks. STBX hadn't drilled through the joists like you're supposed to, to keep the plumbing up next to the floor for warmth. He'd gone down, under, up, across. Down, under, up and across thru out most of the crawlspace. One piece that Plumber Friend cut out, where the largest running water (not drip, running water) was, had 2 pieces of copper pipe held together with electrical tape. Not your best choice of plumbing material, but the theme of my DH's work Good enough for now. Plumber Friend said it had probably leaked since day 1, but over the last 6 weeks or so the tape had finally just plain been washed loose. 166 gallons of water a day! And people think I make this stuff up. So my plumbing is fixed after 3 days with my water shut off, 3 days without TV, 2 days of lost work, a new timing belt on my truck, and today... I get to go to work to pay for all of this. But, that @@#$! holiday weekend is over. Did anyone have a better one? Other than Abfabamy!? Bless your decorative heart!