As of October 2012, USDepartment of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Inspection Service, fact sheet for returning travellers: Meat, milk, egg, poultry, and their products, including products made with these materials, such as dried soup mix or bouillon, are either prohibited or restricted from entering the United States, depending on the types of animal diseases that occur in the country of origin. Fresh (chilled or frozen), dried, cured, and fully cooked meat is generally prohibited from most countries. Canned meat is allowed entry, except beef, veal, lamb, mutton, venison, elk, bison, etc., from countries affected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/plant_health/2011/faq_return_overseas_travel.pdf There's another whole section just about pork. France is on the list of moderate BSE risk so even though you're unlikely to be exposed to it while eating in France, you're not allowed to bring canned meat (or any food prepared with meat) from there. I'm not sure why a tin of meat eaten by you here is a greater threat than you eating meat there and coming home with the exposure. It may be more about politics than agricultural health. Or they're worried you'll feed affected meat to someone who didn't know it came from somewhere where they could have BSE. But you can't bring in canned ("tinned") meat.

TG, it's not a Texas thing (that's just what that particular study was focused on), it's a human thing. When we want to fit in, or just be well understood, in a group who speak differently, we tend to pick up bits of their accents (unconsciously--though I'm sure Mimipadv is right about the pandering, and could add con men to the list who do it on purpose), and if it's an accent from our native cultures, even if not our normal way of speech, we tend to go in for the whole thing to the degree to which we want to fit in. If we want to establish ourselves as the real deal, the accent may actually be stronger for than the people who always speak that way. It works the opposite way too. People who want to retain their senses of who they are find it difficult to lose their accents when speaking in a foreign language. They may have surface thoughts that they really want to speak more like a native, but in their hearts they don't want to let go of their own ways of speaking. There's often an element of classism in that. You've heard the old saw about everyone attending Oxford University coming out with the Oxford accent? I don't know that that's true anymore, and in the past there have been people who have worked hard to shed it, but, in general, when anyone with foreign or lower class accent was there, there would be such massive social pressure to change that it happened and stuck through their lives. Similarly, when people feel the opposite of wanting to fit in, especially if they feel that their origins are superior to the group they're among, their own accents are less likely to soften. That doesn't have to be class based, or alienation, however, and could just be retaining a sense of identity to their origins and selfhoods. Or something like that. :) I have a friend I rarely see in person (we e-mail a lot), who is from D.C. I noticed last time we had dinner together--here in California--that I was stretching words at the end of an intonation (I think that's what it is) in the D.C. way. I guess that was my unconscious way of embracing her. :) My own accent pops out most when I'm with people who speak with a Western drawl, but it retains that, um, well, "surfer" bit.

THanks Kate! Thank you for offering me Magician's Magic. When I bought daylilies from Marriott's final sale before he closed his daylily business, he also gave me Magician's Magic as a bonus. Like yours, mine struggled to put out a nice bloom for the last 3 years. I think I have gotten only one or two times in the last 3 years that bloomed nicely. The rest of the times, they were either splotchy or not opened well. I had since moved it to the edge of my garden where I don't often frequent. I think it is still alive but if it passes on, I won't miss it. Here's what mine looked like this year.

Lilykate , both of those are just lovely! I had not heard of either one so now I have to go look them up and hope that they are at least SEV's cuz I sure would love them in my gardens . EV's dont seem to do well at all here . I do have a few but have lost more than I care to count . Conditions here are quite severe weather wise with extended droughts in the summer and fall ....drying winds ALL the time from the farmer's open fields ....summer and winter ....little to no snow cover and lots of rain in the winter that then freezes when the polar vortex hits ........it is tough being a daylily here and couple that with the extremely heavy blue clay ........and I am always astonished that anything grows around here . The next trick is to find them in Canada .........fingers crossed .