If you like/liked MAD magazine, then you will like the text (and the cover) of Plant Delights' catalogs. If you don't like that kind of snarky, nothing-is-sacred humor, you won't appreciate Plant Delights' text or covers. Plant Delights caters to some very hard-core gardeners, and my experience with hard-core gardeners is that they have very liberal (not necessarily in the political sense) senses of humor. You HAVE to have a sense of humor after the neighbor's cocker spaniel just ate your two-year-old two hundred dollar daylily just as it was about to bloom. You HAVE to have a sense of humor when there is snow forecast for the July 4 weekend (it happens here). Otherwise you would go mad. Okay, madder than you already are for buying 6 Alocasias because you have to have them ALL even though you have no room for them. Personally, I prefer offensive humor. It comes from a long tradition that dates at least back to the Roman authors Juvenal and Ovid. And just because I'm laughing at some very dark, very sick joke doesn't mean I approve of the issue being ridiculed (in this case, domestic violence--been there nursed those bruises). It just means it's still funny.

At a rest stop on a tour in Italy a couple of years ago, the restroom had a couple of stalls with the hole in the floor and footprints, while the others were modern. One teenaged girl got back on the coach to report that she had gone in one of the first kind and exclaimed, "I didn't know what to do!" Farm girl that I am, I wondered how she wasn't able to figure it out, even in the event that as a small girl she hadn't in an emergency been taken somewhere in the grass by her mother. I'm afraid I've become a bit of a cynic in my declining years.

Thank you all! For the tile lovers, there is a story behind it. I always had a strong vision for this kitchen, and part of the vision was the absence of upper cabinets and a wall of statement tile. I am obsessed with Moroccan mosaics, but when I priced them out, the real mosaic, i.e. the pattern made up of actual small pieces of tile, was prohibitively expensive. Lookalike tiles produced here that are just a stamp of the pattern on tile were cheap but looked cheap, the printed pattern began to peel off in a very short time. The tile I ended up with, I first found online here at like $30 PER TILE. And I was ready to buy it! My DH, though, who is of Arab extraction and very wily, saw the stamp on the back of the tile that read "Doremail" in Arabic, and told me to look for the factory online first. Lo and behold, not only is this factory online, but when I wrote to them, they were perfectly pleasant and professional. We bought this tile https://doremail.com/en/andalusian-tiles/719-sevilla.html and this tile https://doremail.com/en/oriental-tiles/895-fares.html 150 sqft airlifted to Dulles airport was only $1,500, which is basically the price of midrange Home Depot tile! And there are so many other gorgeous options. So very happy to give them the plug. Re: breakfast nook, I wanted to buy specifically from the restaurant supplier because the benches/booths you get in regular furniture stores are not designed with the same level of quality and detail. People who make furniture for restaurants understand that the goal is to make the customer so comfortable in the chair that he/she will want to sit there for a long time and order more. So if you look at your standard diner booth, you'll see that it is angled in the seat, in the back, in the shin area, and that makes it much more comfortable than your standard 90-degree angle bench you buy in "regular people" furniture stores. And it's not THAT much more expensive, and you can get it made to custom size very easily because they are used to it. I mean, try telling Wayfair: "oh, this one is fine but can you make it in gray and four inches longer".

I hope Rockybird's collection doesn't show up here.:) KCorona, kind of funny how these things take on a life of their own, isn't it? I think many of us were just stunned with the concept that something so functional, beautiful, and timeless (haha!) as a clock could be bad!