murraysmom, Your Rocket is so cute! I can tell that he has sweet eyes. :) My nut-so actually was upside down, btw: nicole, awwwwww.... poor Midnight! I need to know... is she staying with you? My mom adopted ChooChoo -- same as Midnight, he was an all-black cat that was abandoned when a neighboring renter moved away. ChooChoo always had an eating problem.... I thought it was because he had been left abandoned and starving by his original owner... under my mom's care he ended up winning the "fat cat" contest at the local Humane Society and had a half-page color photo of himself in the city's newspaper. He required a special scale at whopping 32 pounds. He had a 26" waist and at the time he could have fit into my jeans. sigh. This post was edited by party_music50 on Thu, Jun 12, 14 at 16:23

On a hike through the Warrumbungle National Park in Eastern Australia. Picking our route: Some sections are quite steep: We pass these plants known as "grasstrees" that are very slow-growing. This one might be 100 years old. But the views from the top are dramatic: A rock formation called "The Bread Knife" and a flowering grassteree. On the way down: We finished the hike at dusk, and the kangaroos were becoming active, just like white-tailed deer in a U.S. park. G'day

My maternal Grandparents supported their family of 11 working the deep coal mine that was on the land they owned and where their home was built. Of course all the kids as they got old enough worked in the mine. It was wholly owned and operated by the family. That would have been in the early 1900's to about 1940. My Dad died suddenly at age 49, just 3 days before the letter came accepting his application for State Mine Inspector in PA. Heart Disease complicated by black lung took him. He had spent all his working life in the mines mostly as a general foreman and actually teaching night classes in mining in our town for Penn State University.

Last year I ordered broom plant seeds off Ebay(not available locally). Loose seeds in a ziplock. They sprouted quickly & I recognized them as clover. I kindly told the seller he'd made a mistake. He sent me several commercially packaged seed packets to make up for it of Red Lupine seeds from China. Nothing on the packet was in English. Just the packet was "interesting"....:0)....and whats sprouted so far is a deep pink. :0) I'm thrilled just to have these from our transaction!