HMMM. forum for just SASBE seeds. I'm thinking about it BUT, Not sure I'm fully on board with the idea. Playing devil's advocate here and "some experience" in trading, been doing it since july 2003. If we split the forums up into seed exchange only and SASBE/BEAP only, is see some problems or at least some potential problems. Problems may not be the best word, but possibly more confusion than we already have; and, trying to be polite here, we have enough confusion already and don't need any more added to it. What I see is this. Most, if not all of us post a trade list and either mark our seeds with SASBE after the seed or separate lists my posting something like These seeds for trade only. My trade list is clearly marked that way, but it never fails that when I post SASBE/BEAP offers or Trades or SASBE/BEAP and clearly state that I am really only looking for trades on my want list. Glad to look at your trade page though as there may be something on it that I forgot to put on my want list, I get members wanting my trade seeds only as well as SASBE seeds. So if we where to split the forums, how would we list the seeds? Don't know about others, but often I look at SASBE/BEAP offers to see if there is anything there that I want from my want list or the member has seeds on a trade list that I would want and I have something they want as well. If we have 2 different forums, that would mean looking at 2 different forums to check on seeds. That could make for even more confusion for both newbies and oldies as well. I also think that people will ignore the SASBE/BEAP forum more often than not. Just may be the nature of people. Back in the old days, when the infamous Spike owned GW, (no Sue don't pick on me about Spike, I agree people got very very dizzy on their travels to Disney, me included), there was one thing he did fairly well. He kept the rules of the forums links working well, deleted the begging posts, and sent GW e-mails to those that did about breaking the rules. Now we have too many links that don't work and I wonder how many people, newbies, ignore the post we have going about the instructions about seed trading because they are posted by a member and not GW itself. GW isn't monitoring the seed exchange very well, and most of those begging posts, want seeds for postage posts are not deleted. We, as members, can post to them about the rules, but I don't know how many actually listen to what is posted. We also have far too many members both new and old that respond to them with offers of seeds. As long as members just respond to the "beggars" it will continue. I've seen threads started with want seeds for postage, nothing to trade and members respond with seeds, then a member posts about the rules and that post is ignored. I honestly think it would be far better to somehow get GW to respond to the beggar posts and delete them, than to add a forum just for SASBE/BEAP seeds. It just seems to me that too many people are coming on as newbies and are not interested in reading any rules of the forum, no matter where they are posted, and I don't understand that. Could it be that I'm "old"? Not in my 20's, 30's, 40's, but rather in my late 50's and I think of rules and finding out how the forum works before getting involvoed? I remember when I first joined GW and was reading on the different garden forums. Before doing anything or posting, I read the rules of GW, the rules of each of the forums and carefully followed them and how things worked on the different forums. If he case is that people just don't bother to read, or don't care to read, or just ignore the rules on the seed exchange because they are posted by a member, then I don't think it will matter if we have separate forums for trades and SASBE/BEAP seeds and plants. I'm afraid that when you add the forum like this it will just create further confusion and Lord knows, we have enough of that. Fran

It's a hornworm that's parasitized by wasps. Put it back in the garden. It wont be eating anything else. If you destroyed it you also destroyed next years wasps that would do the same to next years worms.

After 2-1/2 weeks, I've finally lost one pound off the weight I started with! (There was that bump there when it actually went up.) I've gradually been making progress on lowering my sodium intake, but it seems as sodium goes down, calories are going up. I'm continually having the dilemma of, do I choose the food with lower salt and higher calories, or vice versa. A good example is light Miracle Whip (fewer calories, more sodium) vs. real Hellman's mayo (more calories, less sodium). I guess it's going to take a few more weeks of juggling to get everything balanced out--but I'm gonna do it. Hi, Raybeck, welcome! I hate to tell you but something else happened in that 2-1/2 years besides "eating too much"--you got 2-1/2 years older! DH and I ate like pigs back in college--we used to *each* get a Burger King deal where we bought one Whopper and got one free. That's right, two Whoppers, an order of fries and a huge drink (not diet) for each of us. And we were thin! I read somewhere that your calorie need really does go down each decade, so you either have to eat a little less, exercise a little more, or else gain weight as you get older. Unfortunately I didn't read that till the damage was done. ;) So don't beat yourself up--you might have been eating the same as always, not realizing it was time to adjust. It's great you're taking charge of it now! TREKaren--I hear you on the Hershey kisses. One thing I'm not giving up is my daily piece of Dove dark chocolate--42 calories, and worth every one. :) DeeMarie--Take care of yourself. Thanks for the vote of confidence in the brownie mix. Can't wait to try it this weekend. Erica

We pay nearly everything by credit card & are the exception to "most people" (do not buy more stuff) & pay it off every month. Ya, same here. I was out shopping once with a friend and I was purchasing something on my CC and she asked, when you charge everything, how do you know you can afford it? I guess the answer to that is I just do. I don't tend to buy frivolous stuff often, although certainly occasionally. But in any case, I do have a pretty good sense of what price I'm willing to pay for something and whether I will have the money to pay for it. I like -not carrying a lot of cash -getting back money on what I spend -being able to look back and see what I spent my money on over the last month I do agree that some (most?) people do buy more stuff and do get themselves into debt and that that is how those CC companies make a LOT of money. But for the ones of us who don't fall into that trap, IMO, CCs are way better than cash!