Love your Buff Beauty. It looks better in your climate than in my hot one. It's a great rose; love love love the scent.

I'm one of the many gardenwebbers trying to decide if marble countertops are right for me and my family. Inspired by sfmomof2, I took a 10" round carrara marble cheese server (purchased years ago from RH) and spread lemon juice all over it. The shiny, highly polished finish, which had withstood years of wiping down with water and melting slices of brie and espoisses, almost instantly etched. The surprise: I loved the etchings! It gave the slab a beautiful, matte finish and old-worldy look. i.e. it looked even more like marble. (I'm starting to think that the "Meg Ryan" technique is the way to go.) Now I just have to decide that I'm OK with that look for an entire island top. (I'm seriously considering the marble-top "French kitchen island" at Crate and Barrel.) I'm curious if there are other etched marble lovers on the kitchen site.

Thank you so much for doing this. Its wonderful to be able to see all the pictures together and I appreciate your work to make it easy and a permanent part of the forum. Happy Holidays, Karen

Thank you all so much for your replies! It's wonderful to see so many of you slogging through the Houzz changes in order to remain in touch, sharing your words and your photos. I hope others continue to chime in as they check in with the forum in between scheduled summer activities and in spite of current technological difficulties. Titian, thank you for the information about Florence's last posting. I may have missed it since it was located on a thread which began with another topic. I wish there were some way to reach her just to say how much it meant to share the exchanges that we did. We even shared family history and photos and artwork. Mary, I have no idea if Houzz ambushed the Furniture Forum with my post after the fact or whether I neglected to deselect the FF as a suggested cross posting site. I THOUGHT I deselected everything but Antique Roses. Since we will never know, and I prefer to maintain the fantasy that I can manage my own affairs, I'm going to cry "Houzz ambush" in order to save face. :-) Carol