Oh Barbra, you go girl! Pricklypear I did buy all those roses through mail order in May and June. I have a spread sheet listed where they came from, how long in transit, how good they looked on arrival, bare root, potted, grafted, or own root. It's my summer experiment! The sales are so spectacular so I want to know what works or how well for next years sales. I ordered from J&P (the best bare roots ever), David Austin, Parks Wholesale, and Ashdown. Ashdown was the only one that shipped in pots, the shipping was more expensive than the roses themselves. The cheapest were the roses from Parks, I got Heritage for $3.89. The average was about $8 per rose and I also got a weeping maple for $15 (it was flat rate shipping so I said why not?). All of them were Austin English roses (it's an addiction), the only ones that did do spectacular in the shipping were the 3 from Ashdown, since they had leaves and it's so darn hot they came with bs. Just another thing to note on the spreadsheet for next year. All the bare roots leafed out spectacularly in the water buckets so far except for 2 of the 3 Heritage's have only got a few buds on the canes. These will be potted and we'll se how they do. I really think the mild wet weather has something to do with this luck though, I mean it's June and in the 80's, unheard of!

Carol, your blender is really neat! I haven't seen a commercial with pushbutton speeds like that before. I think the ones I remember only had high and low. Tracey, I too have gotten some of my best recipes out of mixer cookbooks, especially before cooking forums and what not! Pete, I think that Pleasant Grain often has a sale just before Mother's Day, so I'll watch and see if they do this year. I put all my holiday bonus and tax refund in the bank, so maybe I'll spend part of my rebate on something fun, since I guess technically what you're supposed to do is spend it, LOL. By the way, on a similar but different topic, did you know that Miele is coming out later this year with a new line of upright vacuums that they are making themselves instead of rebadged Panasonics? I think Andy said they'll be out in the US in the 4th quarter, I think earlier in Europe, not sure about Canada.

It did not crack during delivery from the stone yard to the fabricator. It was not cracked on their lot while it sat there for quite some time. I went to match paint, tile, etc. MANY times. It was fine- other than the sticker that caused the stain. It is NOT marble or onyx - the delicate materials. It is quartzITE which is harder than all of the stones, thus what the stone people are highly recommending for kitchens to those who want the look of marble but the durability of granite. SO that's what I got. I felt confident in it's durability and it's gorgeous, so I paid a good bit more per square foot for that beauty and durability. He said the insurance covered dropping the slab on the crane when it arrived at his lot from the distributors. He said nothing about it cracking DURING fabrication. I interpreted the insurance as neither the distributor wanting to accept responsibility for transportation nor the fabricator - so they ask the customer to cover that gamble. That is what I thought I was declining. But the more I think about it, granite companies should have insurance for dealing with delicate materials and subcontractors that break them. Why should the customer Pay for their breaking of a slab!? If I ordered a 5000 dollar appliance and it arrived damaged, the appliance company replaces it. I'm not asked to pay extra insurance for transportation on a refrigerator! The warranty begins once the perfect condition refrigerator is on your property. NOTHING in life works this way. Something is wrecked. The person at fault has THEIR insurance pay for it. They broke it. He has yet to tell me exactly what happened, but during the day of installation I was at the house painting the laundry room and something secretive seemed to be going on in a different language amongst the subs. I think that it happened during fabrication. When offered the insurance, breaking during fabrication wasn't mentioned, and no I didn't think about that. And I would have thought that absurd. I thought he was referring to the changing of hands. I had never heard of such insurance so I knew nothing about it. I was already paying a lot of money for a slab that they told me was the hardest stone of all the stones. I was also agreeing to paying him a good bit more per square foot for its hardness and how that hardness affects his tools. So the distributor and the fabricator are telling me how HARD the slab is and charging me more for that hardness, so paying insurance for fragility didn't make sense. He presented the insurance as if it was for dropping it from the crane when moving from the delivery truck. Now if my 2 year old beat the slab with a hammer and broke it, would I expect the fabricator to pay for that? No. So how is this any different? My point about the range is that immediately when he informed me of the broken glass he offered to buy an entirely new range. I didn't ask for that. Those were the first words out of his mouth. So if he's willing to spend 2500 on my range then why won't he be comfortable forgoing the 2500 bill while I handle the range? That was my thinking because there's no way I'm trusting them to repair the crack. If I get the crack repaired, I will find another company to do it later on. This company does not have the leather finish tools. The slab came from Brazil with a leather finish - it was not fiished by the distributor or the fabricator. To the poster who said I seem worn down--- I AM I AM!!! Before this renovation we purchased a lot to build on. Had blue prints drawn up and ended up selling the lot to the builder that said he could build 2600sf in our budget then later says he couldn't after we spent 10,000 on the blue prints. It's all been very stressful! A lot of lessons learned but nevertheless, very stressful doing all this with 4 young kids. Not asking for sympathy. Just saying that I am worn down. However, I will fight this last fight. I'm not paying that bill. If he wants to replace the slab then I will pay him in full. But otherwise, the more I think about it in terms of other situations - appliances, furniture, windows, doors....The customer isn't left with a damaged item! Wish me luck. I'm calling him now to discuss our options. Hopefully we can come up with a solution that we are both comfortable with.

If you just have a few dahlias, one trick is to snip off the bottom wires of a tomato cage, INVERT it over your plant, then bend the bottom wires at an angle over the reversed top bar (that is now resting on the ground) into the earth like stakes. The reason? Dahlias are very top-heavy, and a normal tomato cage has the widest loop at the top. If they are reversed, and if the grower trains the dahlia to grow INSIDE the loops, then the cage can do a pretty good job supporting the canes as it grows. Hope this helps someone... -CiCi