How can one choose a favorite? My favorite is the one that catches my eye at the moment. I don't have many photos from last year as my camera broke but DH took a few. From spring Allium and Salvia 'Caradonna' Gooseneck loosestrife Mindful of the propensity of running amok in the garden, this plant is in a pot sunk in the garden. Geum 'Blazing Sunset' a bright spot in my red bed Clematis 'Bushy Blue Bell' this is a shrub clematis that is more blue than the photo indicates and blooms from spring until frost. Brugmansia Through the fall Miscanthus 'Purpuresance'

If you have the test kits you don't have to do just one plant per kit. You can put 3 or 4 small pieces of leaves from 3 or 4 different hostas in one pouch and if you get a negative result but still get a good control line then it will give you some peace of mind without using up all your test kits. If you get a positive, though, you would need to go back through one at a time testing each one, or just bite the bullet and get rid of them all at that point if they worry you that much. I'm not saying that's what you need to do, it is all up to you. Good luck. Chris

FOAS, perhaps the trick is to do both MIL's and Yia Yia's recipes? Keep everybody's noses on straight? Nice of your MIL to find and send all the recipes. I know how the mandelbroit in Grandma's cookie jar were made, but that bakery closed decades ago.... :D PM and Edie, I just meant too flavorful for the filling. They're really good ! And ripe and lovely. I didn't halve them though, just cut out the stem then scraped out the innards and drained. I packed them almost to splitting, but there was so much tomato flavor, it masked the bacon salad, which is a flavor bomb on its own. Live and learn. The little tomatoes were all oval and teardrops and the plums were sad, so these really were the best choice. And the little tomatoes have even more flavor. So that gave me a few more minutes with the company, only assembling the half dozen. No one fancy there. They were fine spooning the bacon salad out of the plastic storage container. :) Beesneeds, thank-you for the clear explanation! I think on some level I knew most of that but didn't think of it in my frustration. You've made it all clear and organized. The recipe mentioned using frozen, so I'll try that next. Mind were the bagged fresh English peas, so pretty mature. We only ever see petits pois frozen. But they always have them frozen. If I can get myself from eating all of them before they go in the oven (candy!)... Thanks so much for the advice. Re Mr. Bacon: My friends and family don't do social media and don't want others to do it for them, so I don't use names. It can be very inconvenient and I'm beginning to lose patience, so I named a beloved but unconventional eater who I've been trying to feed (mixed success and failure. I'm still learning). I call him Mr. Picky. Then another of our circle, who has a very mixed bag of cooking skills and massive lacks (I try to help, but he's resistant to learning how to think about cooking), has been withholding the secret to the so amazing bacon. It's always the same and extremely perfect to my mind. I started a thread asking for advice and the consensus was flat on a lined sheet pan in a hot oven. It yielded good bacon (ignoring the part that got charred, which was all my fault), but didn't come close to his. I was really tired after three long days of schlepping and cooking food, so I named him Mr. Bacon. I'm still keeping up with the don't post about us rules and it's so much easier to call him that. Edie, I have rainbow baby snack carrots. I may still make the lucky coins with the big ones. Or I could steam them and put them in Sunday's dinner. I've been thinking about tacos adobos casserole, but don't have it all figured out yet. Or I could shave them! The same kind of thing has happened to me as your mop and bucket. Worry not! i've been told that it lends a homey feel. :) No brevity here. I'm still really tired, though I got myself through this morning's meeting. I'll be interested to see the pierogi and kielbasa forthcoming.

Most of the generic Asian stores here in this Eastern metro area are run by Koreans. Being the savvy entrepreneurs that they are, they don't just sell Korean things. They go for the wider market of just about anything that is not European in origin. And, even then, you can still buy some more common grocery store things such as bread, milk, canned soups, etc. One of the larger ones is Chinese centered, but they do as the Koreans do and sell other cultural foods as well. I like to shop there and one of them is generally on my grocery buying trips. But we are limiting ourselves just because it is what it is and I haven't been back in there since last Spring. Our boring old grocery stores are mostly that, just boring and increasingly full of processed junk or totally overly packaged food items. The Asian markets may reek of fish, but at least they smell of something that is food. I sure do wish that we had more variety from Central America available to us around here. They have some darned good food!!! I wish I could find fresh tamales.