Hi Deanna, we are known to drink many cups of tea each day,..everytime a visitor arrives you offer a cup of tea so you end up with a lot of tea leaves at the end of a week,..i get a sort of perverse enjoyment opening up the semi dried tea bags and admiring all the tea to be spread around the base of plants,..in particular rose bushes,..lol at your remark that thankfully you have stopped growing,..but hopefully just as healthy,..even though you don't flower. Oh all my stuff is far from blooming,..i still have Delphiniums,Foxgloves,Larkspur,Calendula,Mahonia japanica,Chrysanthemum,foxgloves,Crocosmia,Sedum,Black Mondo Grass,yet to flower but i look forward to Verbascium Niger to see how tall it will grow this year,..there are several in the garden,..i don't know where they came from,..volunteer Plants. I had a nice surprise this morning,.. one of the two volunteer poppies flowered,..they are about 2 1/2 high and grew among the Lupin plants,..the friend who gave me the seeds has no Poppies,amazing where they come from. Philip

A couple of notes because the rest is going to be rather long and involved: Lynda, I have the Vitex marked for you and in your baggie! And thank you for the marigolds! They will be very interesting with my others! Dessie I would be more than happy to receive your little helper's seed packets! I think it's great! Wendy Try some Chai Spice tea, it works wonders in helping clear up colds and flu. I always add a dollop of honey to help sooth the throat. It's a staple in our house and really does help. Alright, here is my take on this.. I can understand how many were hoping that the two swaps would not coincide, but, we all knew there was a fair chance of that happening. For myself, I know that I continued to update my list, even well after Patty's swap's mailing deadline. I did my updates using the same method we did for Patty's swap- using an updated date. Even had I not, I knew there was a good chance the two swaps would overlap. I joined this one knowing full well- according to the guidelines posted for it- that I may NOT receive as many as I sent in. That I would receive as many as were sent in FOR me, up to five packets of the SAME item. I recall there being some issue with this and a member who became very rude in their comments about this fact. Yes, my package from the What's Left swap is in the second batch to go out. No, I did not keep strict record of what I sent to those who were in the What's Left swap. I did keep better records of what I'm sending for this swap. I also know that a lot of people will be sending in baggies of seeds marked as extras- not dedicated for anyone, but to add in when it's seen those items are on someone's list. No, these may not be some of the rarer or more exclusively wanted items on someone's list. But if someone has some of those rarer or more specific items to share, I'm sure they would have put them into your baggie before they mailed. So, I don't see that anyone would be missing out on anything. The only way I could see having updated one's list further as complicating Patty's swap would be if someone had removed things from their list. Updating and adding items would not have conflicted. Because if there were any extras of what you were wanting, Patty would have included them. So, I guess I'm not really understanding how there is such a need to update the lists just because one is in both swaps. If I receive duplicates, wonderful! Because the things on my list are things I want! If I don't receive something on my list, then no one had it to share. If I receive so many of something that I can't plant it all, then I can bless someone else by offering it up for a trade. So, perhaps I'm being dense here, but how would one not receive something sent in specifically for them (up to FIVE packets of the same item!) that was on their wants list in this swap? Everyone has the chance to see your wants as posted and you have had the option to add to that list, as many including myself have this whole time. The only thing I could really see the two swaps happening almost simultaneously possibly affecting would be one's have's list. I'm sorry, I don't mean to upset or offend anyone. I'm just honestly trying to understand why this is such an issue. So please don't take this as meaning to offend or as pointed to anyone in particular. This is just me trying to understand why so many are upset about this. If you prefer to email me privately and help me understand it, I would be pleased with that and please do! Perhaps there are aspects and issues with this that I'm not readily seeing and should consider. I don't want to keep the thread off track by my question becoming a debate here. Perhaps there can be some adjustments of dates if this swap happens in the late summer or again next winter, but for this year it is as it is and personally, I'm really enjoying it! Nancy, I hope you don't decide to drop out, because I know that I should have at least a couple of things from your list, perhaps more. But I'll respect your choice and be your Garden Buddy either way :) Fran, you have a real job ahead of you and I don't know how those like you and Patty do it! Leave me hosting my "pair em up and let em go" or true RR type swaps! I think those of you that host this kind of swap are awesome! Angela, you have been a wonderful help to Fran and all of us in this swap! I know the time it can take to code pages like that, though updates are easier once the initial work is done, and I want to say THANK YOU for the time and work you are putting in on this swap for everyone's benefit! Kathy~ heading off to stuff more little baggies and envelopes.

Ok, here is what I have on how to insert a pic from another site: I got this info from a poster on the main board named dgmarie. "If you want to show a photo that is already on a website (say a sofa from a Century furniture webpage), right click the photo, go to properties, then copy the URL and paste it in the message body here. You do have to add some code, however, to that URL. It would look like this: [img src="paste the URL here"] Replace the [ and the ] with an and it will work. this is how my pasted item looks http://www.barronscatalog.com/images/us/local/products/viewlarger/lenhan018_lg.jpg ok I hope I explained that correctly. This is the pic after your put the goodies in: if this works you should see a pic of my Lenox dishes from a web site

I wish I had seen this show. As a rule, I don't care for reality TV, but I think I would have found this interesting. Maybe they will replay it again. I never knew anything about Candy until I looked her up. I think she looks pretty darn good for 66, unless she looked a lot worse on the show than in the pictures I saw. She also seems pretty busy from her bio on Wiki -"She is currently a member of the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission, a Commissioner for the Department of Recreation and Parks (for the City of Los Angeles), a board member of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, and a member of the board of L.A.�s Best, the Mayor's group that provides reading programs to schools in L.A. She is a regular columnist for The Huffington Post, Los Angeles Confidential magazine, and TMZ.com (Spelling It Out). Her autobiography, Stories from Candyland, was released in March 2009. The book hit the NY TIMES bestseller list two weeks after publication. It was also the #1 book at L.A.'s Book Soup."