flora, so thoughtful of you to provide the link. it didn't work for me, but google quickly did so now i'm getting a renewed geography lesson on great britain. i find it such fun as an older person to get into geography because i bring so much more knowledge, and references , to the table of connecting things!so, rather than waste my time feeling stupid, i just get on w/ the excitement of learning! at any rate,i certainly never would have thought of 'sw' including the area due west of london, but there you are. SO. on our one(march!)trip to eng, we did go to bath and westward (tresco abbey being the furthest west in england that we went). google says that bath is 4 hrs from lands end. are you near bath(what a lovely place) or maybe in gloucestershire?( i haven't been there.) i won't waste time repeating the old adage and everything, but i will tell you that even in march we found tresco to be a real treat. actually, it was the first time i ever saw(consciously, anyway)echium. i'm guessing that it doesn't grow many places in GB(?); maybe up at that fairy community in scotland, with the gulf stream and palm trees and everything? I think of echium as kind of like a cross between blue buddleia and acanthus, on MEGA steroids! Now i see echium when we go to carmel CA every march, and there are few plants i love more! anyway, lord knows you live in the land of great gardens every place you look, but i hope you'll treat yourself someday soon- and go there, to tresco. and have you been to the lost garden of heligan? i bet that has really shaped up since we were there at the very beGINNing of that restoration, whenever that was..... best, mindy p.s. i had no IDEA that it looks like you could walk from ireland to scotland in a short time....! the other night we watched a (dreadful) travel film of scotland, but we at least learned that it was settled by irish people, so now i get it. onward with my map study!.......

I'm speechless. Well... maybe not completely! What a perfect solution to my storage problems. DH needs to get busy building that room. As y'all know I had a post a while ago asking for storage ideas. A few days later I shared all of your ideas with DH. That night he thought of the answer in his sleep! Our livingroom is very long. I have my sofa back about 9' away from the wall. Behind it is an antique buffet, an antique washstand, and piles of dishes and accessories I've collected. There is also a doorway to our bedroom back there that we never use. (Because you couldn't get to it if you wanted to for all of the stuff piled up.) All we have to do is move the buffet and the washstand and build one wall. Problem solved. DH wants to know where I'm going to put all of that stuff while he is building! Did y'all notice that those shelves were 2 stacks deep and they were ALL full? And she has stuff on the floor! WOW! And the stemware! Betty

Place your cold eggs from the refrigerator in a saucepan that they can fit into fairly snug. Run your tap water until it is hot. Cover the eggs with this hot tap water. Then put the saucepan on the stove on high heat. Bring to a boil, let boil about 5 minutes. Pour off the water and cover with cold water till eggs are cool enough to peel. The shell will come off in big pieces, leaving the egg smooth. You can also just set the eggs on the counter and let them cool naturally if you have the time, but refrigerate them as soon as they have cooled. You can peel them later, as you need them. I think we had an earlier thread on this, either here or maybe it was over on the recipe exchange forum. --Ilene

I went to the fourth page of these threads just to post this message today! I have really been down in the dumps since my kitty died early Monday morning. This lady lifts my spirits and gives me hope. I have watched it several times since you first posted this, cjd63. Thanks so much for posting this for us. I wish I could email that lady and thank her! Sue