Donnann, your Bee Balm garden sounds like heaven! and I am so sorry that naughty Woodchuck literally cleaned up his plate with your garden...I am sending much warm wishes for your Bee balm garden's speedy recovery...Yes, definitely get wire fencing for it. I would have loved to have seen your Bee Balm Garden.I am keeping my fingers crossed that Mr. Woodchuck will chomp on only the wild weeds instead, like crabgrass or nutsedge or those invasive tree shrubs! I recently saw Kristenflower's absolutely gorgeous rose/lavender heaven too at the gallery and was so impressed! Yours and hers are ideal bee gardens just like Celestialrose. I need to grow much more bee balm because I found out that my dwarf bee balm is not as "invasive" as I had hoped, LOL, no thanks to my crappy soil. I actually planted my bee balm away from my roses in a bare 3 by 3 area. My bee-attracting plants are too young, too few to really attract many bees so next time I have to amp the collection and not! deadhead my beebalm, hoping the seeds will scatter My dad on the other hand has 3 crabapple trees, a persimmon tree, a dwarf apple tree, his yard is completely overrun with wild honeysuckle bushes, lilacs, a forest of hollyhocks and sweet peas(which the bumblebees used to love before they died, one flowering redbud tree, winterberry, azaleas, gardenias, jasmine, 3 crazy rosebushes that are like 8' tall because he never prunes them, 1 rootstock Dr. Huey, all these bee and bird attracting plants which I am so jealous about...But! he does not have bee balm... I think he can certainly add this to his collection...Donna, LOL! I think you will be "enabling" him; the neighbors already think he's got enough of a jungle...Also genes run in the family, hahahaha! I tried to keep as tidy of a garden as I could, but my garden still looks like a jungle because I planted like 50! overly tall gladiolus and now I want to grab some of my Dads overly tall hollyhocks as well! Anyway, I cant wait to see your bee balm garden recover and flourish once again. Hugs! Greenhaven alas I have just a handful of those native beesbut am grateful that at least I have those few. Your post reminded me, do you remember that "I am so excited thread" I wrote? The wonderful cute Mr. Bumblebee that used to visit my garden in May did not survive it seemsIn Mid-June it disappeared after my next door neighbor hired a professional pesticide company to spray the foundations of their home. Perhaps it too was Sevin? It was not until an entire month and a half passed that my Dads bees disappeared... (he and I live in completely separate neighborhoods and bees only have that 3 mi. radius anyways) So as you can see I feel why I feel so guilty. Perhaps if I had mentioned this to my Dad, who knows something could have been prevented? Again, you may be right in that the wild bees are hardier in comparison. They have shorter life spans and dont have communal hives, and that is why they have survived You see if you do the research and look up native bees youll discover thisThey dont have the hives and therefore, they dont have the communal death that the honeybees experience when they are exposed to Sevin. Because wild bees have so many tiny individual nests, each is independent of each other ... Not so with honeybees. Once their hive is contaminated, their entire hive is destroyed, thousands are gone. But to be honest I will always love the honeybee and bumblebees more... There's just something so special about their fuzziness that I love!

It was chocolate with homemade (not by me of course) vanilla frosting with exactly 12 chocolate sprinkles. Then I had the strawberry one as well buy failed to count the sprinkles as I felt too stressed at the time. I had two because the first one did not do the trick. PO1 I have no desire to add to my stressful life by contacting my dad's other children. We were not raised together. Maybe it isn't their fault but their biological mother locked me and my brother in a closet for days during our visits to my dad's. I was 8 the last time I let her close and lock the door on me. So no thanks. I have no need for reuniting and reliving the horror I sustained while my dad was married to their mother. I'm sure she abused them as well but they did move away with her and have continued to stay in the same area as her so I bet there is some loyalty to her, she is their mother. I know where they are. My sister keeps in touch with them. My sister and I are so different. She is best friends to this day with a girl who stole her bike, pushed her in the street and beat her face in. That girl would be no where near my face after that attack but my sister is forgiving. The same reason she tolerates my dad's inability to commit to being her father for longer than a week after 40 yrs. What surprises me is that she was 13 when he left and so she was very effected by it but she just has this need to know all of her blood biological relatives. The same way that she is attached to antiques and old pictures. I honestly don't care for the junk. I have no attachment to blood ties - maybe because I am 100% effected by being raised and loved by people who are not blood related to me. I have an entire family of non blood related people through my stepdad. My sister is not close to them because she was older but I was still in diapers. I don't feel the need to go off and find all of my dad's offspring. I'm sure there are more out there. He is good at reproducing. I just feel no attachment to them. Maybe I am weird but I just feel nothing. One half brother is dying. He has aids. He doesn't take care of himself. He prostetutes.. Why would I want to even say I'm related to someone that is possibly spreading a disease because he is ignorant and angry? I have NO desire. I dont care to know the other one either. The one time I did talk to him, he told me he remembered that I stole his toys. I was 5! He was still holding it against me. I had to steal something otherwise I was locked in a closet or not fed. I needed something to draw attention to myself! I have overcome that abuse. It never really defined me. I never really had issues. I was a great kid. So was my brother. My brother went on to serve our country freely and proudly for the last 17 years. So proud of him! We both overcame it and although I know it wasn't their fault what happened, I just don't want to bring that back in to my life. As far as my dad, I just don't know what I want right now. I considered writing him a letter and just calling it the end. No more contact. Move on. But the other part of me is scared I'll need his kidney one day. Actually that was a joke. I think putting it in writing makes it final. I don't want to hurt my dad. I don't want my words to burn into his eyeballs but I'm certain I just don't want a relationship with him. I just don't know if I want or need to tell him. I have nothing to get off my chest. I have told him all of the things I am sharing with you all, already. He knows it all and all he can do is say I'm sorry, again. I don't want him to say I am sorry. I know he is. I just have no interest. Do you think I'll change my mind as I get older? Not sure. JMT for the record, I agree with you 100%. I already said that and I don't think you need my approval but I completely get what you are saying. A bio parent that gives their child up for adoption is no more a deadbeat than a man who gave up his rights for the same reasons. Just because you both didn't give your child up doesn't change the circumstances. Maybe it would be different to PO1 if you BOTH gave the child up for adoption. Then you are selfless and did what was best for the child. For some reason we as a society say that because MOM kept the baby then dad should have to keep the baby too. But you have opened my eyes to that just isn't how it is nor should it be. I would probably have been so much better off had my dad just walked away and never looked back. Instead he wanted to drag us around to each girlfriend/new wife he had where I sustained abuse and guess what... Dad wasn't home anyway. He was always at work.

Thanks, socks. I forgot to explain - some may know alreadyh from last years posts, but short and sweet... Dad lived in MI and suffered a stroke 4 days after tunring 80. My SM was his caretaker. She had a stroke in January of last year. Both were not in good enough shape to live alone and no one lives there to take care of them. The court intervened and now my cousin has guardianship (this is a divorce case between my partents, so it's a little funky). Anyway my cousin has moved them me out of MI, to KC - that's an 18hr drive from me. They are getting better care and as much as anyone can like living in a nursing home, are doing OK. I'm looking for a cheaper plane ticket though. That one is tough because I lost my job last year and am just now getting back on track. We'll see soon though. Anyway - thanks again everyone. I'm getting ready to call my Dad now. gneegirl

My privacy and freedom is not for sale. I'm a good defensive driver and my record shows it. However I would be penalized for driving in the wee hours. Anyone who drives in heavy commute traffic understands the necessity of hard braking (I should s simply plow into the idiot who cut me off?) People who understand how controlling your vehicle works also understand the need for occasional sudden acceleration to get out of a situation that may cause a collision. This system doesn't reward you for how well you drive but penalizes those that drive safely and skillfully under adverse conditions. Meanwhile it doesn't penalize people who are texting, eating, applying make-up, driving so slowly as to endanger those around them, tailgating, running stop signs, making unsafe left turns into oncoming traffic, not merging at the speed of traffic, are clueless at a four way stop or uncontrolled intersection or all the stupid stuff bad drivers do. So because I drive at night, avoid hitting idiots, know how to swerve around something without losing control, drive in heavy traffic and put a lot of miles on my vehicle I would be penalized. Looks like profiling the environment the driver is in rather than the driver's skills. BTW Progressive has reversed themselves. They announced at the end of last year that they will be using this "technology" to raise rates as well as lower them.