Oh my gosh! You are all the best! Thank you so so so very much for responding at all, let alone for the serious help that you have given me! I seriously thought I'd be left talking to myself thanks to my ill-conceived title there. Petaloid, ironic about the Disneyland banishment although, I suppose Disneyland is perhaps the best place for al fresco ablutions. ;-) First off, thanks so very much for the tips: I'll check Ph and see if some iron-deficiency treatment is in order. From what I'd found online, some deficiencies are marked with the same indicators as an excess of an element so I didn't really know how to operate! Starting with the soil-PH check is a good idea to know what sort of deficiency they might be prone to The sea-weed and the teas for foliar feed sound like a good tip for me to look into - would gardening centers be the place to go to for such things? Regarding small worms - in the spring that is precisely what I'd been finding and precisely what I'd been doing. I could have fed an aviary with what I was deworming every day. But I don't see anything wormy any more and yet the chomps continue to come. That said, the insects that I have seen in my roses have been: (a) some flying buzzing bee or wasp like creatures which may well be the leaf-cutters and (b) gak! earwigs! I've not been able to sort out if earwigs (which have crawled out of a growing rose flower!) were a problem or not - I heard tell that they like rotting stuff and I rather take exception to them finding my beautiful growing roses rotten. Jaxondel, you're not the first person I've heard say that disbudding may help a plant. But I've often wondered how many roses was too many for the plant to handle and what people have systemmatically found. Thanks for the suggestion: of course, I do love the previous answers that a flowering plant is a good thing ;-) Still, I'd love for you to look at my pics and let me know if I have too many flowers on my plants. If you don't mind, I'd like to just show you a few specific concerns I do have, while a full set of pictures are located at this link. Regarding the slits I was talking about on the stems, this is it: Is this a "stretch mark" or something else. It isn't jagged for sure. Two of my roses have this quite low down - about an inch or two above the mulch level. I forgot to mention this earlier, but I also have some stems that seem to be browning from a cut down. One of them had a hole on the top which I read here might suggest canker damage and to cut it away. So I cut down past a node or two to where the stem was green, cutting some new growth away in the process. It has continued to brown and is now brown past a node that has sent up two branches! This is an Abe Darby: This is Portia and the picture shows a growing stem that has green and brown bands all the way down to a bigger stem it branches from. That bigger stem (cut low during the spring pruning and usually covered with mulch) I see has some of the same brown marks as the branch I'm speaking about) That main stem has two branches off it - one of them is quite a big one too! Lastly, the bug damage - clearly at least two different sorts of insects at play here: This one has been munched on by something. But I also show the underside to ask if the coloration there is another indication of another problem? And then there's this on several leaves on all my roses: . Could this be ants? I found an ant colony very close to the roses and today when watering the roses, I see that I "disturbed" several of them. So clearly they've been hanging around in the soil of my roses.

A lot of good ideas have already been shared, but I would suggest you find a different recipe that meets the criteria you are looking for rather than altering your Refrigerator Bran Muffins recipe. And to be brutally honest, there are a lot better choices that are low-sugar, low-fat and high-fiber than this recipe (even if you alter it). This recipe happens to be one of the most contrary recipes when it comes to muffins, and breaks all the "rules" for quick bread. By that I mean: --Muffins are designed to be made quickly and immediately popped into the pre-heated oven. The leavening reacts once when it's mixed with the liquid ingredients, and again when it hits the heat of the oven. That's why it's important to have the oven pre-heated for anything that is leavened with a chemical leavening (baking soda or baking powder). When the leavening agent sits for a a prolonged period of time in the batter in the refrigerator - it is rendered useless which accounts for very little in the way of loft in these muffins. --As flour sits in liquid for a prolonged period of time the gluten develops. Every step of making muffins is so you DON'T develop the gluten - everything from the fat in the recipe, what method you use for making muffins (cake method or traditional method) to keeping mixing to a bare minimum aids in keeping the gluten from developing. Over-developed gluten makes for tough muffins, which is a characteristic of this recipe. When gluten is over-developed this batter gets "stringy". When leavening gasses have to work hard to drill through the long gluten strands it leaves narrow holes that run from the bottom to the top. This recipe was designed for the busy homemaker so they could have the batter ready in the refrigerator and quickly make muffins as needed during the week, but the refrigerator storage of this recipe is now considered a health risk since there are raw shell eggs in the batter. It is now suggested, for food safety, you bake all this recipe rather than use it for a period of time from the refrigerated batter. Freezer storage of baked muffins is a better choice. When you alter recipes you need to understand the science each ingredient brings to the recipe. Sugar and fat are tenderizers, so when you reduce those you will alter the tenderness. You also need to consider the ratio of ingredients one to another. Proportions need to be maintained of the ingredients that are tenderizers (fat and sugar) and those that are structure builders (flour and eggs). When you reduce fat and sugar you will sacrifice the tenderness unless you add an ingredient/s to help adjust for that. If you use egg whites instead of the whole egg to reduce total fat, you will quickly find egg whites are a drying ingredient without the yolk. The fat and lecithin found in the yolk add a whole different dynamic. I'd suggest going to the Eat Better America web site where you will find a number of "healthified" muffin recipes, including bran. -Grainlady Here is a link that might be useful: Eat Better America

san, this would also be good for Dad, who is diabetic. I wonder how the lemon pancakes would reheat? Annie

The timing of the snack aside, they are equally healthful as long as you don't load up the eggs with margarine (use butter or olive oil in small amounts). Both eggs and peanut butter have good nutritional value. I am assuming that you are consuming a snack size, not a lunch sized portion!