Here's a musa sapientum 'Sweet Cream' here in Nashville, TN. At Blooms Nursery. Variegation hasn't been great yet, but hopefully will improve as the plant matures. Slow growing too. And HERE is the much-awaited (lol) photo I've promised of the mythical 'Indonesian Ivory' banana, a banana from Thailand, I believe. The owner is disappointed with this one, and you can see why. Variegation is nothing short of, well, unspectacular to say the least. Once again, the plant is still young though, and variegation is supposed to improve with age. Let's hope so!

Ok, three of my favorite voices around here--Palimpsest, Ideefixe and Oakleyok--have pretty well covered all the bases, but just to recap... The three biggest causes of Decorating Remorse--other than watching TV decorating shows & wishing you had done something other than what you already did, I mean--are Being in too big a hurry & buying something just to have something (rather than have nothing), Worrying about inconsequential stylistic labels & categories, and Buying brand new pieces. I did without a sofa for five years rather than buy something merely to be have something to sit on, I don't worry about what style supposedly goes with what, and I never buy anything new. Well, almost never. The most expensive thing in my house is an early 19th century sofa, for which I forked over 850 of my hard-earned dollars, and the two-months-long diet of peanut-butter sandwiches that paid for it was worth every bite. The second-most-expensive thing I ever bought was also the only thing I've ever bought new: a gigantic 3-piece arched mirror set out of a popular catalog that looked very handsome in the photo but which turned out to be a piece--well, three pieces--of junk, which I should have predicted, since, Hello!, it was in a popular catalog. All I can say is I must have been on Nyquil that day. Anyway, I seldom make mistakes, but when I do, I don't brood & beat myself up over them, so I hauled them down to the service entrance lobby of my building and in a few hours, they were gone. The sofa I'll have forever.

Not much need to own a car if you live in that neighborhood. I grew up a couple of miles from there, and I have clients now in that neighborhood, and I am definitely a "country girl", feel like I'm suffocating when I'm in cities, BUT…I absolutely could live on Beacon Hill (first) and this part of the Back Bay (second). They are beautiful areas, the architecture is incredible, the flora, and a very nice area of Boston to walk around. Pop over to Charles St. for lunch of a drink or window shopping….theatre district is in walking distance, as is the T… But then there's the cost….eek!

Oh. Well, in that case Bumblebeez, you'll have to sell them all and hope that DC meant white truffles and Beluga. :) Of course, the Birkin was styled after a bag that a lady was carrying on a plane. It's an expensive knock off. :) My mother had one of the original kind, or a cheaper knock off of that.... :) Special requirement foods, like kosher or organic or both, which are for philosophy rather than need, are expensive, but they're another story. It's an overall choice to spend a larger portion of one's wherewithal to get a specific kind of groceries that fit one's way of life. While my university made me learn to hate broccoli (I've gotten over it and can eat it, but won't buy it for myself) because there was a bumper crop and we had horse broccoli 3-4 times per week because it was cheap, a lot of universities now are following student insistence on sustainable agriculture and grown within 100 miles. It's expensive, though they save some costs by going right to the farmer, but they do manage to stick to budgets while feeding the young people according to their philosophy. Some have few clothes and many second hand in order to pay for their food philosophies. That's all about way of life, rather than indulgence of the buy oneself a treat variety.