LADYBUGS: Y'all, the reason lady bugs seem tardy has a biological basis that makes sense when you think about it, particularly earlier in the season. Mama lady bug does not lay eggs until an adequate food source already exists. Otherwise, she'd lay eggs, the little ones would hatch out, and there wouldn't be enough food for them to survive. If I see aphids at all, and I seldom do, I usually seee them early in the season. Usually, mama lady bug shows up about 5 to 7 days after I notice the aphids and the babies magically appear a few days later. After the baby lady bugs get busy eating, the aphids are gone very quickly. CATALOGS: I agree that those catalogs cause greenhouse madness and I love looking at them. I could look at them endlessly. Today in my mailbox I had catalogs from NE Seed and Seed Savers Exchange. Dawn

We are in the final stages of building our home. It has taken me two solid years of searching for the right person to do my cabinets. I've interviewed several, and I even wasted some money by starting to work with a couple who claimed they were on the same page as I was but who weren't......as by their push for what "they" liked and thought I should have. I stuck to my guns and kept searching. I do not like staggered cabinets but they were continually being pushed on me. They didn't know how to deal with a large vintage style sink I am using. They kept wanting to line all of them up like lawyer office cabinets, crowd my window trim, etc. I gave up and figured I would use metal cabinets and a couple of tables until I found the right person. Finally one Saturday my husband was doing a search to find Conestoga cabinets so we could purchase some and put them in ourselves. By then I had sketched out what I wanted, but still needed a skilled person to figure the dimensions, etc. Well, we found someone. A treasure of a husband and wife team who make custom cabinets. She has an art degree and has considerable experience in restoring vintage kitchens. She saw immediately what I wanted and we are like twins in our thinking. She made sure she understood how I cook. We now only have minor tweaking in a few details and we are ready to start work. The reason for my long winded story here is to encourage you to follow your heart no matter how long it takes to find the right person. Do not settle. It can be frustrating, time consuming, and very tiring, but it has been more than worth it. I will get up every day for the rest of my life loving this kitchen. Loving your kitchen will inspire you to cook wonderful things in it. Something you don't love will irritate you the rest of your life. Also, be wary of anyone wanting a chunk of money ahead of even talking to you and starting a design. You have no way of knowing if that person will listen to you and you can work together. It is fair for someone to not release a design you like without compensation, but we have lost several thousand dollars on people who claimed they would design something nice, knew what I wanted, but as soon as the check was cashed they could have cared less. The lady I am working with now never asked for a cent up front. Sandy

oh - I did the link and connected just fine. I was just showing you the one I have for today as it's different from what is on the link. Interesting I just looked at the link again and the one I showed you has now shown up for June 14. It wasn't there before.

My mother read the Anne (with an "e") books when she was a girl growing up in Ontario, Canada. Then I got hooked on them when the Megan Fellows series came out on TV and I bought all the old books from used book stores, and eventually all the paperbacks for sharing. I read them, my mother read them all over again, my daughter read them, as did her best friend and her mother and grandmother. Anne became a real person and friend in our conversations. What a wonderful series. It's hard to find something so delightful for 3-generations. I recently donated the entire series to a small community that just started a new lending library. I also included my Anne doll, complete with her canvas travel bag - which had the dress with the puffy sleeves for her to change into. I donated a book about Lucy Maud Montgomery and her cookbook, and included a curriculum outline for the series I used at a local museum as a children's program. We sold all the Anne "stuff" at the museum gift shop. Thanks for all the great memories..... :-) I don't use Google, so I would have missed it.