Hope we don't go too far down the history and restoration road, leaving renewal and renovation behind. Anyone have any books dedicated to garden re-design, garden renovation, garden renewal? Without the restoration/garden history focus? I listed my favorite above: "Rejuvenating a Garden" by Stephen Anderton This is not a book about restoration or historical aspects of garden renewal. This is the nuts and bolts "how to do it" aspect of renewing or renovating any and all gardens -- takes you thru the whole process of re-designing, budgeting, formulating the steps to change and in what order, immediate "first aid" for plants, excellent chapter on pruning in the older, mature and/or overgrown garden, assessing and timing: when to wait and when to act -- I love this book. Very practical and well-written British gardening lore and practices. Ginger

Deeinohio, thanks for the suggestions! Sorry you had such a bad experience, Dee. It's no fun to be stranded. Bumblebeez, thanks so much for sharing that. I appreciate it. Pesky, wow, you are quite informed about cars & auto service issues! That's wonderful. You make a lot of good points that I will keep in mind. Les! Yes! I just discovered what you are talking about last night, after I left GW. I did a Google search--"Blown gasket, Subaru Forester," thinking really, that a search that specific would yield me diddly squat. Guess what? It produced a full page of complaints, chat room discussions, & general angst about serious & frequent Subaru Forester head gasket issues! The 1999 Forester (& 2001) seem to be the most vulnerable to this. Amazing. Never heard anyone talk about this flaw in the system before, but it's evidently been a widespread occurence. Looks like Subaru has responded & NOW builds their Foresters with a completely different sort of head gasket, so newer Subi owners, don't despair! Thanks for sharing this, Les! Oakley, yes... I think so! Again, y'all have been fantastic. So many good points have been raised & I feel so much better about this situation. Armed with your feedback, when I call the service dept. Manager this morning, I will feel confident to inquire about & dig a little deeper into the diagnosis. Also, here is one of (The Many) links about the horrors of Subaru Forester gaskets! It's from a chatroom discussion & the last poster suggests getting a written guarantee on the work. Not a bad idea, either. Here is a link that might be useful: A tisket a tasket, I think I blew my gasket...

Many manufacturers of dinnerware with non-English sounding names - like Pfaltzgraff, Mikasa, Dansk, etc., misleadingly put on a facade of being elegant foreign brands but in fact are US companies and always have been. For many years, companies like these and other well known names as Lenox manufactured their products in the US and in higher-quality foreign locations. Today, I believe all the US factories for these up-market lines have long since closed. Most production is sourced from lower cost and lower quality locations like China. China has had a few too many incidents of contaminated or adulterated products to suit my taste. It's a funny irony because of the name, I prefer not to buy china from China. For those of you getting replacement pieces for old sets, what you buy today may be from a different factory even if the same pattern. Friends have told me of having some success in finding "old" stuff at replacements.com.

Hi Siobhan, it's been a tough year for me. A member of my family battled colon cancer this year. Thankfully, she is now in remission. I guess my emotions are still pretty raw from dealing with that experience. Marco's death is just so unfair. I'm finding it hard to process. Your experience is very similar to the loss of another friend I experienced a few years back. It is an awful feeling. Someone mentioned in an earlier posting about how Marco's obituary sounded like he himself had written it. Actually last summer, Marco informed me that he had updated his will, and made various lists and instructions for his friends and family in the case of his death. This is so typical of Marco's consideration for others. He himself may have written the obituary, though I can't imagine he ever thought that he had so little time left.