Yes, I'd also like to know which catalogue has those cabana boys! I'm exhausted, especially with all the watering, and the summer is not over yet. However more has worked than hasn't so I can't complain. My new roses are a joy! After months of indecision whether to buy roses I had decided they would be too much trouble to do this year when we are renovating the old beds. However on a trip to the city at the end of June one of the 'good' nurseries had them on sale so I bot 5 in large pots. Of course that necessitated making a new bed for them which was an enormous job. They have looked good from the start and I left a few blooms on them initially but then deadheaded seriously. They are now reblooming despite the hot dry weather we have been having. Of course I'm watering frequently and they seem to like frequent drinks of diluted alfalfa tea. I'm still concerned the deer might find them but we made the bed next to the house in the dog's large grassy yard so perhaps that will deter them. I'm soon going to move some of my lavender plants there as extra insurance. I know they are not necessarily easy plants and I'll have to mulch heavily in the fall but they are very pretty. The lilies I planted last year are blooming profusely, multiplying, and looking fantastic. I'm pleased with my new shade garden altho it's only had superficial weeding and needs a thorough one. Coming up on the to-do list - I've just been grabbing weeds that are blooming or threatening to take over as I hand water. I thot it might be too dry with the large trees taking all the moisture but with amending and occasional watering it's doing fine. Love all the heuchera and will buy more. I love my potted annuals, they've been a real pleasure when some parts of my garden have looked so 'destroyed' during this renovation process. Even in this heat they are still looking great with daily watering and frequent deadheading and fertilizing. I'm quite disappointed in the nursery that planted the azalea I bot. I thot the roots looked fine when I planted it but it didn't do well so I dug it up and there were a lot of wood chips in the center of the root ball! So I hosed the roots clean, planted it in good soil, and after frequent watering it's coming back. All of the other new plants have done really well. I'm not very happy with one of the new beds further out as I haven't spent enough time on it. Probably shouldn't have made it this year but it will survive. It has all deer resistant establish perennials I moved from my main garden so I didn't think I needed to baby it too much. The spirea looked as if it had died but is finally coming back. It really needed more water than I gave it. I've had a problem with too much direct sun in parts of my garden since we had some large trees removed and some of the Lady's Mantle have not done as well as usual. So I'm moving the young ones to semi-shaded areas and discarding the others. Just part of the evolution of a garden one has to adjust to. I'm disappointed I may have few sunflowers this year. We usually have lots as the birds are messy eaters and seed them all over. We usually transplant some to better locations. However there were very few coming up so I planted some and the chipmunks dug them up and ate the seed! I planted more and kept them indoors til they were a few inches tall. Put them out and those little !@#$% ate all except for the red flowering ones. So I have them in larger pots but not sure whether they will flower as were planted late with all the tomfoolery! The thistles the birds seeded around the feeder did extremely well!!! LOL This morning I thoroughly weeded and mulched so that bed looks nice again! Wonder how long it will last. I don't usually get thistles in my garden but there must be some type of bird that eats them in the wild and deposits them here.

I am another who just loves Sharon's Salmon Quiche! Yum! And I adore Deborah's Paella Salad, too! I wouldn't have hurt feelings if someone wasn't too crazy about a recipe I posted as long as they don't "bash" it and just nicely state that it wasn't for them. We all have different tastes as is so obvious by this thread alone! But I do see Sherry's point, too. There are a couple of recipes I've tried that many of you rave about and I just scratch my head and go "huh?", but we'll leave those be. I tried lots of new recipes this year, and just some that made my "keeper" file: Pear & Candied Walnut Salad....Rachel Ray Stuffed Pork Chops...The Neely's Chicken Alfredo Pizza....Cooking Light Great Lakes Salmon Chowder....Midwest Living Magazine Ultimate Shrimp Scampi....from allrecipes Roasted Carrots with Thyme & Garlic....rosemarythyme Capuccino Mousse....Midwest Living Magazine Peppermint Bark....Sharon (Chase) Pork Saltimbocca with Polenta....Cooking Light The only bomb I can remember was a knock off recipe that really tasted nothing like it's namesake, Boston Market Meat Loaf. But I try lots of new things and if we don't like them I simply toss the recipe so I don't remember most of the others. Linda

"It was actually a whole lot more than 30K, but I was uncomfortable putting the real amount. She was engaged to do everything - it was my job to give direction and pick colors and pay. That was it. She didn't want to run the purchases through her business and, frankly, I did't think it was fair to charge me hourly and make a profit on the merchandise itself. She agreed." The above makes no sense to me. Anything I have ever bought through our designer was his cost plus 35%. You'd come out better buying through her than paying retail and paying her by the hour. Additionally, most "to the trade" furniture and decorative accessories, wallpapers, fabrics, etc. can't be purchased by a client and therefore have to be "run through her business." Ditto the workroom. If all you did was pick colors and pay, that means she must have contracted the workroom and given them the design and dimensions of the curtains. That makes her the customer, regardless of who pays. But the financial arrangements are bizarre and make me think she is not a professional, certainly not an ASID. Also, in our state 8k is not small claims. Curiouser and curiouser.

I think Ashley has zeroed in on the essence of the issue: an opportunity to teach a lesson about 'hearsay', or 'gossip', as opposed to eavesdropping. In reading all the responses that go back & forth on trying to determine exactly what constitutes 'eavesdropping' or who should be blamed, I agree that it's a very ambiguous issue. We all, as fully grown adults, basically 'know' when we're straining to overhear something, and even if it's technically 'wrong', we all know we *sometimes* do it anyway. Or we *have* done it, at least once, even as fully-grown adults. So it's really hard to guarantee that you will be able to do anything to 100% fully prevent a kid from listening in... especially if you have a conversation where you know he's around and could possibly walk in at any second or perhaps overhear. So I agree that in Ceph's case, it wasn't really anyone's fault ---neither Ceph for not fully realizing at that moment how utterly fascinating & tantalizing adult discussions can be to a kid or A____ for being a curious kid--- but that adults should be a bit more careful, and kids should have it explained to them that they may at times overhear things out of context that they are best not to repeat because they can accidentally distort the truth and end up really hurting someone without meaning to. And that they wouldn't like it one little bit if the tables were turned and it happened to them! Maybe make up a hypothetical scenario, using some humorously exaggerated details, wherein A_____ becomes the unfortunate victim of an unchecked rumor spread by mis-heard hearsay. Like for example: "A_____, let's say after I dropped you off one morning at school I *just so happened* to overhear some very cute girls saying 'A____ looks like such a STEAMBOAT in his red-and-white sweater!" And then what if I told some other kids, and soon everyone at school thought that? Then what if I much later found out that those girls had REALLY said "A_____ looks like such a DREAMBOAT in his red-and-white sweater!"? Wouldn't YOU prefer that I'd made sure I'd checked with the girls before I told a bunch of other people that you resemble a big, slow, square-ish BOAT?" So that he gets the point but in a non-harsh way and you both can giggle about it at the end.