Sandy, Fenceberry, Connie, Cat, McT, Cyn, Alexa, Carol and Hostahaveum, your comments are so nice to hear! And Manyhosta those are wonderful words for May. Yesterday the sunrise was absolutely beautiful, the sun looked huge and glowing orange, just a nice May morning. Sandy aren't the Knockouts great? My husband swears the pink one has a fragrance but for the life of me I cannot smell it. So now when he exclaims over the scent I just pretend to be able to detect it ;-) Fence so happy to hear my NF enabled you, lol. Niagara Falls is always one of my favorite hostas. Connie and Cat, your words are much appreciated! McT I guess they wouldn't work for you. The Styrax Emerald Pagoda is borderline zone 5. Unless you were to opt for a container to move it to a sheltered spot for winter, just a thought. Cyn, yes I'm seeing the same here, not my Empress Wu yet but others are already sending up their bloom scapes. Everything is so early here this year. Carol, yes I have more :-) Thanks for the kind words, Alexa, Hostahaveum and Carol!

I'm no expert but the GE fridges are ASSEMBLED in the USA and, as long as 50% of the components are made in the USA OR the product undergoes substantial change into something else (motor to fridge anyone), GE can lay claim to the label - made in the USA. Many of the components, including the motors , are actually made in China. Now would you really want to buy an appliance you hope to have for at least 20 years or more, from a company that has been wanting to sell its consumer Appliance division for over a year? Google "Ge appliances division sell" if you need to and see how the company is doing all it can to improve the profitability of this division so it can increase the sell price. What's the best way to make more money - sell an item for a lot of money while keeping the cost of production as low as possible. Cheap cost of production = JUNK! My GE Monogram Fridge and freezer just went back today so maybe I am biased because I fell for the advertising pitch and bought into it but from experience I would never touch a new GE product again - they aren't built like the ones from a few years back. our new ones didn't even last a year. And at $5000 each that is money we were NOT going to lose. Fortunately our dealer bought them back for full credit and we are getting German made units instead with European providence on ALL the components.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions, but as it turned out, Sony decided not to send anyone to Toronto and is going to let the staff in Toronto work it out on their own without a director. I guess that is one way for them to save money. So I will wait for warmer weather before I visit Toronto, and Kevin will not be there, unless he goes with me. Last week a friend asked me to go to Brazil with him some time next year after April. He has to settle an estate there, and he knew that I could take the time off. We'll see if that materializes. I would like to visit Brazil, but I've been afraid to go because I do not speak Portuguese, but my friend does, and that would make me feel more comfortable. He will be mainly going to Rio de Janeiro, but would be making side trips to Petrópolis and other places.

Woodnymph, although I realize what Mangan was trying to do with her psychological thriller, Tangerine, I feel she was only partially successful. Like you, I enjoyed the setting and descriptions of Tangier especially. The part in Bennington, Vermont was not as interesting to me, but I suppose it was necessary to set up the dynamics of the relationship between Alice and Lucy and to a lesser extent the relationships of the women with John, Alice's husband. However, I think the characterizations were not well defined beyond Alice is weak and Lucy is bad; John seems barely drawn, in my opinion. That's the reason it is hard for readers (I'm one) to distinguish the women characters in the every-other chapter narration, which btw has become trite (it appears so often in today's novels that I'm tempted to impose a self-ban of reading any story told in that style). I've noticed in the past five years -- maybe as much as a decade -- crops of newer writers are trying to resurrect some of the older genres. Nothing wrong with that, because many of the old stories are fascinatingly atmospheric. Unfortunately, many of these writers don't have the skill to recapture the old style -- or even update it well. One example -- and Mangan is guilty, I think: Writers use opacity as a substitute for subtlety because they simply haven't worked out how to be subtle. Mangan's pastiche of Highsmith (I definitely see this influence) and maybe Tartt bear comparison. I don't know Gillian Flynn for anything but her Gone Girl which I didn't like, so I can't say about Flynn's and Mangan's styles being similar. As for a reviewer saying Mangan is a "literary descendant of Daphne du Maurier" - Ha! I've heard and read that as a lure for hopeful readers for going on sixty years now, and my mother says that particular come-on has been used since the 1930s. Hype is lazy, sometimes, and Mangan's Tangerine is as overhyped as any new thriller is nowadays.