Wow, it took me a long time to find an article about this in a scientific journal. The best I could find was from 2005 out of Thailand. No mention of the blue. If something new has come out, I haven't found it. That is one of the many problems with blogs, especially these nutty blogs and pseudo health sites--no citations. Bamboo, I agree that that website is wacko and probably the people there are leftwing, but there are plenty of wacko fake health sites on both sides of the political spectrum. Many times, you get fringe people from both ends of the spectrum agreeing on the same wacko things. The article I found is "Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of modified antifreeze protein gene in strawberry" by Khammuang et al. in Songklanakarin J. Sci. Technol., 2005, 27(4) : 693-703. There is no mention of the blue, however they do use a plasmid as part of the cloning of the antifreeze gene (AFP) called pT7blue. If this is where the idea of the blue strawberry is from it is totally off base. The 'blue' used here is to indicate that the plasmid contains a common gene used in cloning. The gene does cause things to turn blue (only when a specific chemical is added), however the act of cloning disrupts the gene and it is no longer functional at that point. One thing that I wanted to point out is that in this article, they use Agrobacterium tumefaciens (a common plant bacterium) to deliver the AFP gene to the strawberry plant. As I mentioned in the previous GMO thread, viruses are not the only method of transferring genes (not that there is anything inherently bad about using viruses.) Agrobacterium is an example of nature doing its own GMO sort of thing. In nature, the bacterium transfers its own genes to the plant in order to make the plant produce nutrients for the bacterium. My point here is that humans are not the only ones swapping genes around (that is in no way meant to imply that it is either good or bad--it all depends on the context.) Drew, unfortunately because Monsanto focuses on plants, most of their technology doesn't have much relevance to human (or any animal) genetic disease; but you do make a good point that biotechnology has the potential to help a lot of people with a variety of diseases. I'm no Monsanto fan, but advancing technology gives us more tools at our disposal to fix problems (even if we created them in the first place) if use them responsibly. Here is an article in the NYT from 13 years ago mentioning the antifreeze strawberries. Here is a link that might be useful: NYT article from 2000

I live about 90mi north of Sac and have similar temps. JC does about the same for me as John's. I just planted mine in the ground after having her in a pot for a couple yrs. She loved getting out of that pot! ABOUT FACE is a lovely rose, but grows like a dang climber for me. It's planted in a somewhat shaded area, so that could explain it. But it grows to at least 8ft and I have to tie the canes to a big fat stake. The blooms are pretty, but blow pretty fast. They don't repeat all that great either. I guess that's because the plant is always trying to grow taller and taller...

Dottie -- Steve selected the plants to feature and I had no idea what he'd use. He and the photographer walked around taking photos. I have so many more plants than mentioned -- vitex, buddleia, monarda, salvia, ornamental grasses..and on and on. Thumper and his buddies hang out in my garden and I ran two out last evening. The only repellent that I use is for rabbits, not deer, and I only spray rudbeckia and the echinacea when they are a few inches high. Once they are in bloom, I stop spraying. The repellent that works best for me is I MUST GARDEN that is made locally in Chapel HIll, but I have no affiliation with them. Thanks for the feedback on the article.

I read the book before I saw the movie. I absolutely hated the book and the author along with it. She's a miserable person, imo. I envy those of you who didn't read the book because, unfortunately, that ruined the movie for me. I know that the movie was quite different from the book and the character was tempered (Julie, not Julia), but it was still ruined. I love, love, love Meryl Streep and she was delightful in this movie, as always. But if you want to continue loving the movie, my advice is to not read the blasted book. (Can you tell I really, really dislike Julie?).