Gail, I have have some lovely Yarrow "Cassis" and some Cerastium tomentosum, for you from the Easter Bunny. I am also awaiting an order from Derry Watkins for an unnamed pink Bush Clover Lespedeza thunbergii AGM, which I would be willing to trade for a split of something interesting from your pending commercial order. Would you like to continue by e-mail? Bev

Hi Kids, We will not be having a big Easter dinner but I can't get away from tradition all together. No company for us and no invites to go out so we will be taking advantage of the good weather to get some heavy yard work done. I will start a pork butt in the crockpot in the morning so we will have some yummy pulled pork sanwiches at the end of our day. I also made some yummy pickled eggs last saturday so by tomorrow they should be perfect! It will be a very different Easter but I can live with change. I look forward to the pork. gazania, I hope you enjoy your pickled eggs and beets as much as I am going to enjoy mine. My kids love them when they are here but my husband can not stand them. He hates hard boiled eggs and when you add beets to the mix, he runs for the hills. I love them and can't get enough! Enjoy! It sounds like all of you will have wonderful meals, start to finish. I hope you all enjoy the bounty, the company and the day. sooey

Dh and I have lived in our current house for our entire marriage, 17 years. Truthfully, it was being built when we got married, so we lived in an apt for 2 months, then my parents for a month then it was ready. We live on the outskirts of a waterfront tourist town. We were supposed to be here for 3 years. Dh was in the Navy and this was not supposed to be our forever home as we anticipated being transferred by the Navy. However, dh realized the Navy was not meant to be his career as he didn't want to constantly move once we had kids. We wanted to live close to one of our families, but unfortunately, they live on opposite coasts. He is from the San Francisco Bay Area, and I am from the Wash DC area. Since it was the height of the tech boom at the time dh was getting out of the Navy, and we simply could not afford a home in the Silicon Valley, he got a job here, which fortunately is only 25 minutes from my parents. And here we've stayed. It is NOT my dream home. I don't even really like it. It was small when we moved in, and even smaller after having four kids! We looked around at moving to a different home, but absolutely love our neighbors and our community so finding a home that fit our needs was very difficult. We live in a high COL so home prices made it hard to find something that fit our desires while still being affordable. 10 years ago, we added on and while the space has helped, it hasn't changed the fact that our floorplan isn't desirable to us. We live in a waterfront community with very strict building codes, so we worked within that and have maxed out what we can do w/o completely gutting the house and starting over. With four kids in private school and one off to college in four years, I've pretty much resigned myself that we won't be moving anytime soon, nor can we really afford at this point to do any major changes that would help. I am constantly looking at houses for sale in the area, but the only affordable ones are in tract home subdivisions and that's not type of community we desire. So we make do with what we have. And it's not that my house is bad, but it's not set up well for entertaining, something I'd love to do more often, we had to give up our fabulous screened porch when we added on and cannot add another due to space constraints. I miss that terribly. On the bright side, we have wonderful neighbors, live in a waterfront neighborhood so the kids can fish, swim, kayak, ride their bikes freely (community is a peninsula w/no through traffic), etc. My dream is to move into the historic district in our tourist town where we can walk and bike everywhere. We live 5 miles from there now, but not on bike-friendly roads (though dh is an avid biker and rides them, no way my kids can). There are some really fabulous Arts & Crafts cottages, as well as many other architecturally interesting homes that date back to the 1700s. My hope is to move into one of them some day and have that be our forever home, with a second home in another climate. I wish I could love this home and think of it as my forever home, but it is not ideal for aging. We have three floors, with bedrooms all on the third floor as the garage/rec room are "under" the main living level. My parents still live in the house I grew up - they are going on 50 years there. They will stay until it's too much for them as it's perfect for aging, a rancher. All that said, as much as I want to move, the idea of moving is dreadful to me, which is probably one of the reasons I haven't really pushed for it. The thought of trying to keep my home in "show" condition with four kids, a huge dog that sheds, well, not fun. So perhaps a small part of me continues to find something undesirable about any of the houses I'm always looking at. I figure if I'm going to go through the hassle, the house has to be pretty close to what I want! Love all the interesting stories!

Last night I boiled my chicken carcasses, strained, and put back in the frig for todays chicken noodle soup. I tidied up the house and did some floors. On my second load of laundry. A load of white sheets, Persil Perls, 158degf water, 4 rinses. No fabric softener and a load of white bath towels same procedure as the sheets but added 1 Tablespoon Downy citrus spice. I'm thinking about making some sort of dessert. I don't need dessert but the kids will enjoy something. Were supposed to have a pile up of snow and ice. It started about 20 minutes ago with huge snow flakes comming down heavy and thick....already laying in the grassy areas. I imagine school will be cancelled or delayed tomorrow. On second thought maybe I should hold off on making a dessert in case school is cancelled than the boys can make cookies..yep that's what I'll do and just give them a piece of fruit after dinner tonight. Since I'm not baking today I will probably make a pot of tea and sit at the window for an hour with my book. I have an hour and a half before the boys get home and I'm pretty much done for the day AND I'm tired. Cant go like the energizer bunny any more. Lol