Rose slugs are the larvae of rose sawflies. They bear a resemblance to caterpillars, but when you learn enough about insects (btw, this is not necessary to be a successful gardener, including successfully growing roses), you will learn that there are external, identifiable differences between the larvae of sawflies (including rose slugs), and the larvae of moths & butterflies (aka "caterpillars"). This is a picture of a European species. It isn't the rose sawfly I saw (the one I saw was completely black), but there is more than species known by the name "rose sawfly". These insects are small (roughly 1/8" long) and bear a resemblance to wasps (which are in the same insect order as the sawflies), but sawflies have no stingers. Wasps feed on a variety of foods, and often are predators of other insects, but immature sawflies always eat plants. Sawflies are unable to cause physical harm to humans, but their babies may eat your trees & shrubs.

There are hundreds of heirlooms with numbers, in all areas of types. Foreign types, eg: Italian, Hungarian, German, Polish and the list goes on. In my opinion, that sounds like a great one for a September / back to school swap. And what about a red/white and blue swap for July? Heirlooms come in all colors regardless of variety. I can think of a few of each color, EVEN Tomatoes! Oh and purple is red and blue mixed ;) Don't know about the rest of you, but in my opinion, Thanksgiving is terribly overlooked. It frustrates me to see Halloween worked directly into Christmas and leaving our special day to give thanks, behind. Maybe a trade with Thanksgiving in mind for November. Focusing on Autumn harvests. There are winter apples, sweet potatoes, potatoes, onions, brussels, cabbage, squash of all winter types, corn, beets and many many more that can be harvested in November...not to mention all the incredible dishes that are made on Thanksgiving. Cranberries, carrots, nuts, string beans, celery (for the stuffing) and the list goes on. Keep in mind that pumpkins and squash are not just halloween harvests...in fact, squash is a November havest. Maybe keep corn (halloween corn stalks) for October and of course pumpkins, maybe even gourds and strange veggies. And for December, maybe keeping with gift giving, enabling any and all trades. A wish list so to speak, allowing any type of seed for the following growing season. Just some suggestions. Hope they help :)

Oh, absolutely! Maggie Smith was/is and forever will be Jean Brodie in my mind. I also think young Pamela Franklin as Sandy Stranger was outstanding. I saw the film first back in 1969 and was so blown away that I wanted to read the novel immediately. But, for some reason that I can't recall now, I was unable to locate the book so there was a several-year gap between my seeing the film (two or three times) and my actually reading the book. I found Muriel Spark's style of telling the story rather annoying: She would jump into the narrative and start relating what Sandy Stranger was doing a quarter of a century into the future, in other words foreshadowing without any of the subtlety in which that technique is usually used. I later learned that this was something that Muriel Spark did in some of her other novels -- it was almost a 'signature' of hers. Well, I didn't like it...at first, perhaps because the film adaptation left that 'device' or 'technique' (or whatever is the proper literary term) completely out and instead told a straightforward, though somewhat telescoped, story. I also noticed that some of Miss Brodie's set, the crème de la crème, were missing from the film. There were six girls in the book, but they were conflated to four for the film's purposes and three of the girls (besides Sandy) were composites. For example, it wasn't Jenny in the book whom Miss Brodie said would be "known for sex." But I don't think the conflation of the girls in the film really matters. Neither does the restoring to wholeness of the one-armed Teddy Lloyd (the art teacher) in the book. A two-armed actor playing a one-armed part is sometimes not very believable -- and can be distracting -- so I think that was a good call of the filmmakers. I have a bit of a harder time with what happened to Mary McGregor in the film that was completely different in Spark's novel. I've puzzled over that change for years. The only way I can reconcile it is to say: Well, it happened one way in the book. It happened another way in the film. They both work. I guess I'll have to compartmentalize one from the other. And that's what I've done, basically, for forty years. Has something similar happened to any of you, either with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie or some other book/film combo? Well, I was almost certain that the books and films I listed above were ones that I remembered RPers discussing in other conversations and reviewing in monthly threads. I still think they probably were, but the discussers and reviewers must not have been presently posting members, because the only bites I've got so far are about Out of Africa. Are you sure none of you have read or seen The Age of Innocence? :\-)

I enjoyed both the film and the book and used to listen to Helene Hanff when she was on the BBC with a monthly 'Letter from New York' with her growlie 40-a-day fag-habit voice describing her fashionable friend Arlene and walking the dog in Central Park. As in the book Hanff and Frank Dole never met, also in real life Bancroft and Hopkins never met while making the movie. Their conversations via letters where recorded and played to each other using a hidden ear-piece during filming to make the 'flow' seem natural. Also in the book Hanff asks Dole if his unusual surname is Welsh to which he replies along the lines of "Good Heavens no! My family were originally from Cornwall" Hopkins (who is Welsh) refused to say this. For an English person to be mistaken as Welsh (and vice versa) is a terrible insult.