I do order from Amazon and never had any problems with them. I have ordered from Walmart too but usually big items for home delivery. So many places let you do pick up at the store, it's easier than going and walking around gathering up the goods. Like Lowe's I can go online and order, check if my store has it and then drive over pick it up and done in just minutes. So much easier for both of us. I have been looking at jet.com since they have decided to drop their registration fee and it's going to be free. They have a lot of stuff, trying to go with what amazon does. There is a shipping fee unless you have over their set price limit,again similar to Amazon. I was a bit shocked however when I was looking through their chips category to see if they had the veggie chips and there with the chips was a large sex toy labeled as cinnamon... They need to get that kind of thing corrected lol. I had no idea they had a whole selection of that under health and wellness. But other than that wake-up shock in the chips aisle they have a good selection of products and the price seems to be around the right range.

Ok I was panicking for nothing, as usual. The lady was so helpful and happy to change my quantity. Easy peasy. Also request no defoliation but she said they do remove the bottom third of the leaves to prevent blackspot during shipping after the pots are watered. Ok by me! Can't wait til it comes home!

Jennifer, I'm hoping you were able to finally make it home, enjoy Wine Wednesday, and get some rest. You cannot go into this weekend too tired! Some other weekend, yes, but not this one because you are going to stay so busy. Rebecca, Hmmm, pepper bitterness generally only is a problem is you are harvesting them and using them green. They only truly shed the bitterness when allowed to ripen to their full mature color, but there are different degrees of bitterness along the time scale so that the further peppers progress away from being younger and smaller to being older and larger, though still green, the more the bitterness usually fades. I don't know of any weather or nutrient condition that makes them more bitter, but if I run across any description of something that does, I'll try to remember to come back here and tell you. When our mom told us to go out and play, it was pretty easy for me to go out, play a very short while, and then quietly slip back into the house and go into my bedroom and read. With 4 kids coming and going, if you were quiet once you were indoors, you could get away with that. With the seeds that you're sowing that won't sprout, are you surface sowing? That is what works best with me with green seeds---I broadcast sow on the surface of the growing medium and don't cover them up. I do lightly pat them down so they have good soil contact. I don't know if the seeds of greens necessarily need light to sprout, but I know they sprout better (and at a higher germination rate) for me if I don't cover them with soil. I got lower germination rates and slower germination when I covered them, even lightly, with anything---even compost or the lightest amount of peat moss. You are NOT a garden failure. It is either the seeds or the growing conditions that are failing you, so be kind to yourself and please stop feeling like a failure. If I were to allow myself to feel like a failure every time something in the garden doesn't go my way, I'd be so depressed and disheartened that I'd give up gardening. Instead, I push on relentlessly, overplanting everything, figuring if one thing doesn't work, another one will. And, on a lighter side, this is Oklahoma where the weather is cray-cray, so just blame the weather when something fails! Jennifer, You're welcome, and I agree that gardening is grounding. I feel like it surely is as good for our bodies as it is for our souls. I understand how you feel about meat, and I think you are not imagining it---you just have a soul that likely communicates with the souls of the animals. I feel that same way about people, especially native people here in the USA. When we visit a state park, for example, which is the scene of large battles between the native Americans and the European invaders who called themselves Americans, I swear I can feel the souls of the native Americans talking to me....like, I am walking in their shoes on their land, though not in a literal sense as I am not at war with anyone. I feel their pain and suffering when I walk an area like that--not in an intellectual way, but in a true emotional/intuitive way. The first few times it happened to me, I felt quite unsettled by it and then I decided to just accept it and to not try to overanalyze it or to fight it. I hope y'all enjoyed sleeping in today. Nancy, I really used to live in pepper hell because I'd grow 15 or 20 kinds of peppers and wear myself out trying to preserve them all. Now I grow only a few kinds, and only the ones we adore most, and it has made the pepper section of the garden easier to control, and has made the inevitable kitchen mess/workload more manageable too. When we first moved here and I finally had a sunny space to grow stuff (in the city, we had far too much shade so my garden was tiny), I grew far too much of everything. It was fun, but the garden and my life both are more manageable now that I have cut back and am trying to grow only enough excess beyond what we eat fresh to give us some food to preserve instead of trying to grow as much as possible and then ending up worn out from dealing with all the excess. It did take me about 15 years of growing far too much of everything before I started cutting back, and I still am trying to get the balance right so we have enough of each thing, but not too much of anything. Well, with tomatoes, I'll likely always grow too many just because I like to have a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors and flavors. If growing too many tomatoes is my worst garden vice, then I think I'll be okay. Tiny will learn. Even Yellow Cat, who roamed our neighborhood for a good 10-12 years as a semi-feral cat before deciding to move in with us for his retirement years, still had to learn. After a lifetime of dodging wild things, he still liked to come inside and sleep all day and roam all night, which made me nervous. After a bobcat chased him up onto the roof of our house during the middle of the night, and I awakened to horrible screaming and had to quickly open a second story window to bring him in off the porch roof, he quite abruptly became an indoor cat at night, and outdoor by the day. By then he must have been 14 or 15 years old at least. He might have learned the lesson of nighttime safety a bit later than I would have liked, but he learned it, and then he lived for several more years to enjoy his retirement before he died of old age. My dad was naturally quiet by nature, and I took after him, so I never really was a chatterbox. Our oldest granddaughter? She'll talk 24/7 if you'll let her, and I never knew constant chatter could wear me out until now. We are trying to teach her that it is okay to ride in the car, for example, in companionable silence if you don't really have anything to say that isn't just mindless chatter. It is getting better, bit by bit, but we have a ways to go yet. We got drizzly, drippy, mostly misty rain most of the day yesterday, so no sunshine yet again and today is expected to be pretty much the same. The heavier rain is expected tomorrow. I miss the sunshine. The amount of mud we have is unreal. In the back where I feed the deer, the mud is just a churned up mess, so I keep moving the feeding area to grassier spots without as much bare ground showing, though the deer don't like change. The dogs and cats both are going stir-crazy from being indoors so much, and I am right there with them. Whenever I let them go out, or when I go out myself, because we are in between bands of rain/drizzle/mist and it seems wise to run outdoors while we can, it almost immediately starts to rain again. Just let me walk down to the mailbox without a raincoat or umbrella, and it will start to rain as soon as I am down there, 300' from the house. It happens every time. I'm so bored with being stuck indoors I have cleaned out the spice drawer and thrown away out-of-date spices, which meant (of course) making a list of the few that I threw out so I'd be sure to replace them this weekend. My constant cleaning out of drawers and things might be making Tim nervous. He survived the closet cleanout, but I haven't really touched his dresser drawers, nightstand drawers or anything in his office (where all the desk and printer table drawers are crammed full of stuff) and I think he might be worrying that someday when he is at work and I am bored, I might clean out the desk drawers and throw away some of his precious junk. Of course, I will not but the thought of it probably has him antsy. I am dying to get my hands on the garage/shop which is 1200 s.f. of 'stuff', some of which he actually needs and uses but much of which seems to be 'just in case we ever need it again' type clutter. I might make the garage/shop my 2019 project and work at it month by month. He'll have to be home when I do it though, so he won't worry I am throwing away too many of the things that he deems important. On the other hand, we'll never move to another place again because just the thought of packing up that garage/shop building would make him decide that moving is not going to be worth it. (grin) Seriously, when we moved here, we knew this was our forever home. However, I didn't know that "forever" applied to every piece of anything ever put in the garage. I'm really starting to get worried about the prospect of an El Nino winter. If the rain continues on through February the way it has been now, planting is going to be delayed for weeks if not months. I cannot decide whether to order my Dixondale onions for the usual early arrival date in February or to strategically order them to arrive 2 or 3 or maybe even 4 weeks later than usual in case the garden still is a mucky mud hole like it is right now. They've raised our chances of El Nino developing for winter here in the USA from 65-70% to 70-75%, so it is seeming more likely, even if it is going to be a Modiki El Nino instead of a regular one. Dawn

Absolutely.....and my sterling is in the kitchen drawer and in daily use also....and it goes into the dishwasher! Some 30 years ago, when I remodeled the kitchen and added on to it, I was shopping and ran across a set of Mikasa fine china with a slate blue rim, the color of my new floor, and a rosy red stripe and gold decoration....$15 for 4 place settings...I bought 8 settings, because I wanted to have new dishes in my new larger kitchen.....and learned how nice porcelain is for every day....light, chipo resistant....and just nice. For about 28 years they went into the dishwasher all the time.....and the colors have faded on the most used pieces....and I put them away for a while when I bought the Haviland, Limoges at Good Will....