I live in a very different part of the country (inland SoCal) with relatively low humidity and hot dry summers. However I thought I'd show off my LA. :-) I first fell in love with her at Descanso Gardens, 160 acres of botanical gardens and displays. She was in partial shade and her sweet spicy scent captured my attention --- she had me at first scent! So I found her on-line and have had her now for at least 6 years or more. She's in front of a low retaining wall in all-day sun (think: hot, reflective, un-protected sun) in rich amended clay. I tend to forget to give her the same attention I give the HTs -- the same water, food, etc -- partly because she just seems healthier. Anyway this is a pic I took this month after giving her a thorough (and very late) dead-heading of last year's blooms. This is her mature size, about 3 feet tall and about 5 feet wide. ... and this is a close-up of her taken last month... ... and today, in all her ruffly goodness...

*chuckle* Thank you and you're welcome, budge! I was out-and-about all day yesterday closing on the new house, playing in it a while and then having dinner with friends to celebrate; today we had a (long!) showing here at the old house and I had a very long nap afterward. BTW, although they're super-cool, I'm too cheap to buy the nifty elasticized mop covers when I can get "irregular" microfiber cloths at three for a buck at the dollar store and use them for a dozen other things besides the floors. :-) (Okay, I did cough up for the Bona Kemi oversized hardwood mop and two covers, but we can call that a post-hardwood-installation euphoria. ;-) It's not maneuverable enough for my bathroom though.) I just use a regular ole Swiffer frame, the simple little one that comes in three pieces (no squirty thing) for about eight bucks from the grocery store, and while it's not the strongest thing in the world if you need to scrub that hard maybe it's not the tool for you! I wet and wring out a microfiber "miracle" type cloth, drape it over the rectangular head and push little bits of it in the holes with which you secure the disposable cloths. If you want to use a cleaner that requires rinsing, just wring out one cloth in the cleaning solution, then go back over it with a second cloth dampened with clean water. Me, I'm a one-step kind of gal, and for me one of the great joys of the microfiber cloths is that they just need water to get the dirt off stuff. I think Budge may have gotten a rather more specialized and less "cheap, quick and dirty" (ahem...) product. I just combined what I already had on hand, and I know a lot of other people already have Swiffers and microfiber cleaning cloths on hand so they don't necessarily need to go buy another product either. BTW, just a weird little thing I thought I would pass along - did you know you can use a wet miracle cloth to remove makeup? It even took off waterproof mascara and extra-long-lasting lipstick without having to resort to the oily crap I usually had to use to get the stuff off. (I'm not really the makeup type, and I hate raccoon eyes and touching up lipstick!) Another case of me being cheap - I wondered why I should pay $14.99 for a "makeup remover washcloth" at one fancy store when it looked and felt like the 3/$1 miracle cloths I had at home, so I tried it next time I had to paint up my (already-adorable) visage and it worked. The squeamish might want to get a different color to keep them separate from the ones in the cleaning supplies. :-)

Susan, you're right, those stirrups in the delivery room were quite comfortable. Supported your whole leg..kind of a tray that your calves fit right on to. I liked them better too. But I dont think they are something that can be folded back into the table. At the clinic that I work at, the stirrups pull out from the table and fold out to hold the feet. I don't know where they would store the larger ones. I think those are attached to the table during delivery. So they wouldn't be practical in the clinic setting where we see so many patients a day. It sure is a nice thought tho. Then the doctor says in a sweet voice..."The key to making this exam more comfortable is to just let your legs fall to the sides" YEAH RIGHT!!!! I know my patients would rather kick him in the head when he says that. Some patients you practically need a crow bar to pry their legs open to do the exam. Hahahahaha.

Jen I hope it turns into nothing more than a 24 hour bug that leaves you alone! So that huge hole....it sits just a few feet outside of the kitchen and about fifteen feet from a lower level basement door that was installed in the 30s for the nurses apartment. We are going to use that underground door (which currently rises inside a shed steeply) and instead you'll walk out of it and go down through a tunnel made of fiberglass (which can be coated with whatever surface we want) into the base of the cistern. It is about 16' deep so you will enter and see a spiril staircase in the center rising to a platform. Wine storage two bottles deep (3000 case capacity....and no we have nothing near that lol) you walk up the spiral and 8' up you end up in the platform which will be a tasting room with a glass ceiling above. Decor will be somewhere between midevil and mining tunnel chic. I think I am going to hide the eNterance in our pool room in a book case just for added fun :). Building it will suck the life out of our wine budget...so maybe we can store friends wine? Heh heh