Acraftylady, there is still one in my IE 10. It is the word "forums" with the little symbol beside it. I don't think it pops up unless you run your cursor over it. You just have to learn to keep your cursor off the written word. Literally!

maire_cate, 17 pounds is terrific! Congratulations! I am hoping to have time to concentrate on getting back into shape and losing a little weight once school is out. Now that the nice weather is starting, I am trying to convince myself to walk the dogs every day when I get home, no matter how tired I am. We'll see. Having always been very thin, this weight gain is hard on me. I am used to eating whatever and not putting on an ounce. New meds for thyroid has helped the energy level slightly, but I know I just have to do the work now. Hmmm, time to go downstairs to do my weights before getting out in the yard for a bit-knees and all don't work so well anymore either. No more all day gardening at this point. Sheesh. Oh, and do have those colonoscopies everyone. Colon cancer is not something anyone should die from anymore (except in the very rare, early case maybe). I was going to have my last one done in our town rather than going into Georgetown University Hospital where our doctor is located and where we usually. Have everything taken care of healthwise. I decided to go ahead and go into town. I know they are good there and they do so many of these procedures that they are quite proficient. Debrak, I don't know where you live, but it might be a good idea to share your concerns with your doctor now, so you and he can find you a doctor and hospital you trust. This is not something to ignore.

Mustangs, I agree with Peppi, you're an excellent cook. Your salad with figs is my favorite and I don't even like salad! My problem, I guess, is that I don't care enough. I've seen about a dozen "fake pregnancy" jokes by celebrities and if I don't know them and don't have to buy them a baby present, then I don't care. I overheard a teenage boy talking about filling Oreos with toothpaste for April Fool's Day and giving them to his friends and I thought, "yup, that's a "kid" thing". It's also disgusting, but at that age, would be funny as heck, like the old salt in the sugar bowl thing. Annie

kpr, it's great that you've found a way to get rid of your extra plants in a way that helps people. :-) I can't imagine going through what you and your family are dealing with, but it's always nice to see people trying to think about others outside their own circle. We had an eventful morning yesterday. The toddler managed to get into a bottle of acetaminophen that one of the teenagers apparently left out and not-quite-closed when they were here last. All's well, but we got to spend a long morning sitting around the ER to find out that apparently he'd just been licking off the cherry coating on the pills. *facepalm* Needless to say, his door is now locked if one of us isn't up to stop him from doing Things That Make Us Freak Out. Pretty sure I've got a couple of gray hairs now I didn't have before. Took some more pictures of the garden today. Everything has grown so much in the last two weeks, it's a little ridiculous. Here's the garden with all the trellises set up. The beans and cukes are just coming up, so the support lines for those are tied up right now to keep them out of the way. I had to touch up this photo a bit, 'cause it was getting dark by the time I took it, but I think it came out nicely. The west side of the garden hasn't been mowed in a couple of months, there being Things In The Way, so I've pretty much got a border of rudbeckia and monarda on that side - LOTS of pollinators available here! I finally got around to cleaning out the onion bed today - you can see some of the grass and chickweed I pulled out in the walking row on the picture of the whole garden. It was a bit ridiculous - I was literally pulling out grass by the handful. The bush beans, working hard at putting on pods. The one that got hit the worst with the gunk I wrote about a few days ago is in the foreground next to the survey flag. IDK how clear it is, but it still appears to be growing beans, so unless someone tells me it's something that can be passed along to other plants by touch, I'll leave it there. Peanuts, reaching for the sky. They're still flowering, if not as excitedly as they were a week ago. It might just be that the flowers aren't as concentrated by the center of the plants - they appear to be moving outward now. Pole beans, just started coming up a couple days ago. Looks like I'm getting good germination so far. The tomato row - they've taken off a bit. Most of the plants are flowering and fruiting, now. I'm thinking about removing a couple of leaves from the very bottoms of the plants, to keep them out of the dirt and make it easier to get in to weed around them. Remember me saying I had a bunch of flowers on the first trusses that were double and triple flowers? Here's one of my mutant tomatoes starting to grow. The flower never really opened up all the way like the regular flowers do. I'll be interested to see whether this one grows up to be deformed or just segmented or something, but it's definitely at least two fruit that are growing together. So many flowers!!!! Pretty sure this is an indeterminate tomato, and at last count there were at least a dozen buds on the first flower truss. I've got some that have had seventeen and twenty-four buds. The radish/carrot bed, two weeks after I pulled most of the radishes. I left a few to go to seed - anyone know how long that takes? I wanna see the flowers! Corn is still standing, though it's leaning a bit. We had 35-40 mph wind last night, and then a light 17-20 mph today, so it hasn't quite stood back up, yet. Still, it's a damn sight better than last year's flattening. Couldn't get a good picture with dark coming on and the stalks leaning, but it's starting to tassel now. I tried to take a picture of the cukes coming up, but it came out kind of crap. I'm trying a new thing this year - I planted a single row of pole beans down the middle of the bed. Hopefully, the soil will be a little better off than it would have otherwise been at the end of the season. This year, I'm really just hoping to see if the two grow well enough together, since I don't have anything else, crop-wise, planned to go in that bed until next spring. Anyway, that's the garden now. I love looking at the pictures and seeing how everything compares from one week to the next. Here's to May!