I was there in August and surprised myself with all the photos I took of bark features. The gardens are celebrating their 150th anniversary next year. Those metasequoias were planted shortly after WW II, and are truly majestic. Nearby is a zelkova with wonderful fluted trunk taper. I noted a parrotia that was peeling and flaking, and several maples, not just paperbark, with beautiful bark. Guess i need to go back after leaf fall and take more pics. Truly a world class garden. brian

Nice slideshow Elizabeth!..Your plants are BEAUTIFUL!!!..Thank you for sending!...Carmie

Thanks Shaxhome. Very good question. There are very important benefits for the sous vide method. 1. Less meat shrinkage, may be 5% less. This adds up to a lot of money. 2. Cheaper cuts of meat. I recently did London broil ($2.49 a lb) medium rare, and tender like expensive steaks. This will save a lot of money also. 3. Precise quality of meat done-ness. Rare, medium rare, medium ----- it is all up to you to set the temperature, nothing can go wrong. No-overcooking or under-cooking. Fool-proof. 4. Makes no difference how big the meat is, from one thin breast meat to a whole turkey. Set it and forget it. 5. Makes no different starting temperature, from frozen to room temperature. No need to poke around with a probe thermometer. 6. Re-heating without over cooking. 7. No need to "rest" the meat. In this case, the steaks were frozen, I put them in the sous vide cooker with a little seasoning, set the temperature at 129 F for one and 133 F for the other. A few hours later, 5 minutes before meal time, fire up the cast iron grill to red hot and grilled the steaks 1 1/2 minutes each side to sear. Perfect steaks. Perfect hot steaks. Guaranteed every time. dcarch

dcarch, The sea bass and scallops look delicious! I'd enjoy having that for dinner. I love the summer when DH is fishing frequently. DH and his buddies' tuna trip is scheduled for Sept. 9 this year. They'll go a couple hundred miles past Montauk. Boat is being readied now. What is that red/yellow striped tomato - is it Berkeley Tie Dye? If so, we've got lots of those this year. Beautiful and delicious. We will definitely plant them again next year. About the BER on Green Zebra - have you tried liming in late winter? This year's weather has been so unusual. Normally we get pretty consistent rainfall but this has been a boom or bust season, dry in the early part of summer and torrential tropical downpours every 8-10 days since the end of July. Our locations are so close geographicaly but Mystic's weather pattern is much different because of our location at the entrance to LIS. There's a permanent "stable air" mass overhead - fun to watch on radar, rain will seem to be overspreading all of NYC, LI, SECT and when it gets to the Mystic River just disappates...poof, gone. Yet, we still get about 55-58" annually. It's those ocean storms that nail us. Anyway, my guess is this year at least it's the very uneven rainfall that's led to BER for your Green Zebras. /tricia