I came across this thread while searching the bathroom forum for installing sinks! Very interesting thread, I just have to add my two cents. I grew up in the Philippines (in the 60's) and our shared bathroom had a toilet that was retrofitted with a small tube that sprayed water upward--specifically pointing in the right direction (after #2), if you know what I mean. It was effective for getting the bottom clean, and not wasting a lot of TP. Moving to a new house in the late 70's, we were able to install bidets in some bathrooms. We favored the fountain sprays as opposed to the one which had a faucet. We had always used the bidet by sitting on it the same way you would a toilet. It surprised me years later to find out that Europeans use it by straddling the bidet, facing the bidet controls. Having to transfer from toilet to bidet was a hassle, but having a bidet had become a necessity since we got so used to a water stream in "that area". Fast forward to the 2000's. Most homes I know don't even bother with the bidet anymore because what has become very popular here is a "bidet hand spray". It's like a kitchen spray that is connected to the side of your toilet, to use whenever you felt like an extra blast of water would be useful. A bunch of rolled face (should I say "bum") towels sits next to a bench beside my toilet. The hand spray is easily retrofitted to an existing toilet by using a valve that has two outlets--one for the toilet and one for the spray. With the new homes that use "gray water" for flushing toilets, many have just plumbed in another cold water line where the hand bidet would be connected. Now even the guest and powder rooms usually have this feature since it's so inexpensive to add. A handspray is cheap--from $8 to $30 depending on brand and material (plastic, chrome-plated brass, etc). The only downside we've experienced is if the water pressure is too strong, and the valve is not shut off before leaving the house for vacation, the hose can break and flood your bathroom. That would do a lot of damage to wooden floors and sheet rock. But if you know this, and keep the pressure at medium at all times, shut valve off in long absences, it should be fine. Bidet sales have almost vanished here, even in the most high end homes, giving way to these hand sprays. I was trying to put in a picture but I don't know how to, so just google "bidet hand spray" and you'll see what they look like. I'm not sure if they carry bidet hand showers now in Lowe's of HD--but I've actually sent these over (together with the retrofit valves) to some cousins in the States.

One of my friends owns an apple orchard, and due to the reduction in the bee population in recent years, has to rent bees every spring. The beekeeper can pretty safely market the honey that is produced as "apple blossom honey." However, at the slightest hint that all is not well with the bees, the beekeeper packs up his hives and hightails it out of there, leaving my friend's orchard virtually bee-less. I used to buy honey at a farmers market in southern California. The honey was all different colors and had very different tastes. I asked about it, and the "honey lady" said that indeed the hives were simply placed in fields of whatever crop was named on the label. Not 100%, but close enough. I told her that gave me an image of a rural paradise teeming with flowers and bees, and she said I wasn't too far off in her case, but that is not always true. She said that quite good honey is produced in suburban areas, but you can't be sure of where or what the bees feed on. I surely miss that honey, I've never found as good here in Massachusetts.

Kim, That was a long drive. I hope the ice in west Texas doesn't make it terribly hard for you to make it back home again. I enjoyed a quiet, lazy day around the house, and being all nice and dry inside while the rain came down outside.It was a very relaxing Thanksgiving, though I missed seeing my family members. We'll be together a lot in December though, health and weather permitting. I might work on my Tomato Grow List today, although it may be challenging since the dogs and cats are bored and underfoot since they're stuck indoors and their solution is to come and try to sit in my lap, which makes it hard for me to use my laptop computer. There's only so much that a woman can hold on her lap at one time, and my limit appears to be 1 laptop computer and 1 purring cat who keeps trying to sit on top of the computer. I think things are looking up for us. They had raised the Red River flood projections a lot yesterday afternoon and evening, and now they have scaled them way, way back. At one point they thought the Red River would crest at the Gainesville Bridge at 34' or so, and now they are way down to 27' or 28'. That's nothing compared to what we had in May and June, so we're happy about that. Only 3" of rain here so far, but there's up to 5" more expected for our area. I'd be perfectly happy if no more rain fell, but it is so widespread that I don't think it all will miss us. None of it appears to be soaking in though, so there's tons of standing water everywhere, including some large puddling on some rural roadways. It doesn't look as bad this morning as it did yesterday when the rain was falling, so at least some of it has run off into the creeks and maybe that will keep the roads more clear of water during the next bands of heavy rain. It is a good day to stay home and stay indoors. After I fed the chickens, I let them out because they are used to free-ranging and get antsy if they cannot roam. I'm hoping they'll get their free-ranging out of their system and go back into their coops before the next band of rain arrives. Probably they will sit on the porch railing and stay mostly dry like they did yesterday. Having a porch rail filled with chickens certainly adds to the rural flavor around here. I am watching The Weather Channel as I type this and just saw the news of a high water rescue in Tarrant County around 3 a.m. They managed to find and save a deputy who was swept away while trying to rescue someone, but haven't yet found the person she was trying to save. I didn't realize how high the water had gotten down there just one county south of where you are---it looked worse there than it looks here. I think they said that was happening around 3 a.m. so perhaps they got a lot of rain overnight. Our rain tapered off overnight and we only got 0.75" so our rainfall total didn't climb significantly. They also showed a road under water in Grayson County, and it was under several feet of water. See there? More confirmation it is a great day to be indoors. Had I bothered going out shopping on Black Friday, which I haven't done in several years now, I likely would have gone to Sherman----the flooding was in a rural area, but who knows what it looks like there around the shopping centers. I can either go online and finish my Christmas shopping or work on my grow list for 2016 or both. Or, I have a stack of seed catalogs to look through. I am increasingly concerned about how much the ice storm conditions seem to be creeping ever further into central OK. It doesn't take a lot of ice to make a big mess of things. I cannot believe we are having to even have a conversation about snow, sleet, freezing rain and a wintery mix of all the above in November. It makes you wonder what's coming in December. Since we don't know when the El Nino water faucet will turn off in spring, I'll probably select 3 to 6 tomato varieties bred specifically for disease tolerance this year, which means hybrids. I am not overly fond of hybrids, preferring the flavor and texture of heirlooms, but in order to ensure the plants produce enough tomatoes to fulfill my canning needs, I think the 2016 tomato grow list has to be a mix of both. Since I am cutting back on how many plants I plant/grow, I need for at least some of them to be as bulletproof as possible. A rainy spring will mean a lot of disease, and I dread that. Dawn

Thank you, Carol for a great thread. It is still Fall over here for me. This weekend, I filled two large barrels with leaves and there are still plenty more on the ground. It was windy, so all the leaves came down at once. When I moved leaves away from my roses, I discovered two new basal breaks on roses that had lost canes last summer. That was a happy discovery! Well, see you on the winter thread. ★* 。 • ˚ ★* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • •。★* 。 • ˚ * 。 • ˚ ★ 。* 。 ° 。 ° ˛˚˛ * _Π_____*。*˚ ˚ ˛ •˛•˚ */______/~＼。˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ •˛• ˚ ｜ 田田 ｜門｜ ˚