I do have 'Hot Lips' and you're right, I should take some cuttings and add those. I have salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue' but in my yard, that turns into a shrub. I also looked up the s. macrophylla and it looks too big as well. Rich, I don't have any of the ones you mentioned. Do you have those in your collection, and are they available for purchase from you? The farinacea is the only one that I have familiarity with. I had Victoria Blue and Victoria White, and they were completely overwhelmed by 'Lady in Red' last year. LOL, Victoria was too sedate, I guess. Becky

So, Ron, why did the electrician who inspected the wiring of my old home, which was wired with EMT, said that I had to run a green ground wire through all the conduit? Good question. With few exceptions EMT functions as the grounding conductor. Adding an actual wire would be "belt and suspenders" but in any case I would imagine it would have to be sized for the largest conductor and it would have to be connected to each box and/or device. Years ago I did see a home where the foundation had started to collapse and when the problem was fixed, the pulled apart a run of EMT. There was enough slack in the run that the wires stayed connected but the ground was lost. But after looking at it a while longer, I think maybe we're seeing a plaster ring, and there's a much larger box behind it, inside the wall. In my experience it's pretty common to use a 4" square box and a mud ring. That typically provides plenty of space and about 2" of depth. I think there are 'self grounding' receptacles but they aren't the norm. There are self-grounding devices that will either have a little brass tab or a pair of wires on the yolk that "captures" one of the mounting screws. Those devices are typically more expensive. Otherwise ground the device with a short piece of wire. That wire should be attached to the box with a threaded screw (not sheet metal). One of the holes in the back of the box will be threaded to accept those cute little green screws sold in the home center. So if you are wiring in a Lutron Maestro dimmer, that has a black, red, red/white, and green wire in the back, how would you wire it? The two blue wires coming in from the top left and top right get attached to the black wire, red to red, ground to the box as discussed in the previous paragraph. Red striped gets capped off.

Go with cool colors for the walls, not warm ones. A very light gray-white would be nice or a very, very soft blue. Try these on for size: Marilyn's Dress: BM 2125-60

Updating Jeanne sends to Melinda - sent & received Melinda sends to Urooj - sent & received * Urooj sends to Beth * Beth sends to Mandy - sent Mandy sends to Jeanne - sent & received * I'll check more about these later today. I may have missed seeing a post or two. And now. BINGO for the last posting of the month. Today's words are: AMERICA COMMON The Secret Words are: the Beautiful (America the Beautiful) Sense (Common Sense) Winner of the Secret Word is Melinda with an incredible 8 correct secret words out of the 15 choices she made. Congratulations, Melinda! Waiting to see who posts having BINGO.