I have two teni's in bloom and tree peonies are opening now, Elizabeth Blair Hirsh, Fen Dai Bai, two unnamed tree seedlings. The one seedling I have been watching the bloom got nipped by something and took the top off just as the freeze hit and does not appear to be opening any further than it was. Next year I will definately wrap it with many layers of wire. The bud was the size of a supersized jawbreaker and looked like it would have been a peachy pink. Even if you are not in the area of this tour check your local gardens. Many have established Chinese or Japanese gardens and should have tree peonies. Tree peonies generally bloom earlier that the regular herbaceous.

I really appreciate the comments. My eye dr. has referred me to a surgeon for surgery and I absolutely don't want to do this. I've postponed the surgery twice and about to do it again. I hope others will post about their experience. I am using hot packs 2x/day and light massage which seems to help.

Cloecat, Bella is a 5 year old with mitochondrial disease. I met her through a friend that goes to church with her family. Bella has had many surgeries, and other struggles all of her life. I follow her story on Facebook. She is one of 5 children, and 3 of the 5 have auto immune diseases. Bella is also Autistic.

"In college, my dominant eye became nearsighted while the other remained normal. The images were not "merged" as you describe because (as an example) in a large lecture hall, I couldn't read what the profs would write." Of course the images weren't merged properly because you didn't have clear vision in both eyes. Once you got your glasses with correction for your right eye, then the images from your right eye merged with the images from your normal, uncorrected, left eye. With contacts or IOLs "set" for monovision, both eyes see correctly for the distance for which they are corrected, then both of those images are merged by your brain. "I still wear glasses to this day and with different corrections (as I understand is not unusual) in each." Yes, I think it's probably more common for people to have differing corrections for their two eyes than for the two eyes to need the exact same correction. I used to work with someone who wore contacts with the same prescription for each eye, and he never had to worry about making sure he got each lens in the right chamber of the soaking solution. I've worn "hard" contacts since the early 1970s, and when RGP lenses (rigid gas permeable) lenses came out in 1979 I was switched to those, and have had RGPs ever since. My contacts have always had an almost-imperceptible dot near the edge of the right lens, so you can easily tell which is which. "One thing to consider is that if one's distance vision is only seen through one eye, then depth of field is lost." And that's exactly what the problem was that night when I was driving home with monovision contacts. And because I cannot say with absolute certainty that I will never, ever, be in a situation again when vision from only one of my eyes will be enough to serve the need/purpose at hand, I will never, ever, have my vision correction set as monovision.