Thanks for sharing that Ron. I did not know any of those stories. They all touched me, and they made me think of many other stories there are out there. I travel a lot on my job and in pursuit of my other passion in life; trout fishing. I see men and women in uniform in almost every airport I travel to, but I particularly see many on my trips to Charlotte. Some of these folks are going "over there" (or getting ready to) and a few of them I've met were coming home. I never go by without letting these people know that many people here at home, whom they have never met, care deeply about them, worry for them, wish them a swift and safe return, and thank them for their service. I hope these people never ever want for their fellow Americans respect and concern. And I hope that if you are reading this that you will reach out to these people when you see them in your own life, shake their hand, thank them for the job they do, and let them know in some small but sincere way that you care. You'll be doing that person and yourself a great deal of good in the process.

Oh yeah, shade for sure. I'm an experienced gardener and have rooted lots of cuttings - just not too many brugs. So far, the leaves have not even wilted. The pots are those tiny starter pots that hardly hold more than 3 Tablespoons of soil. Over time, I have seen so many posts of people saying something like "I was going to toss these cuttings but I decided to just pot them up anyway to see" and then they show a photo of a bunch of beautiful plants. And I know that brugs are pretty hardy in Florida and I have lots of general plant experience - so I decided to go ahead because I have plenty of stems if these do not work out. But it is good to know for the future that brown stems have a better chance of rooting. So far so good! Carol

>>...didn't have a pantry?>> Well, I wouldn't have any room to store any food, LOL. I cook a lot so I have doubles and even triples of every size cookware I use, plus 25 yrs ago I moved in with six sets of dinnerware and three sets of flatware. I have three separate spice drawers because I cook everything from Indian to Chinese to French and half a dozen other cuisines. It was my first (and so far only, thank goodness) opportunity to design a kitchen, so I crammed in all the storage I could. We were handicapped by only having 1 wall of uppers. One half-wall holds the frig and is open to the LR and DR. The other wall has floor-to-ceiling windows to capture a great hillside view: I worked with graph paper and managed to get everything behind doors. It was about a week before I realized I had FORGOTTEN to put in any food storage! I did have three narrow closets in the DR (a former bedrm) for the upright freezer, the microwave and wine stemware, and the table linens/vacuum/stepladder. But nothing for dried pasta, Asian condiments, dried mushrooms, cans of soup, etc. So.....we had fortunately not placed the order for the kitchen cabs yet. Two 18" wide pantry units were hastily added, and placed in-between the DR and kitchen. The top doors hide fixed shelves, the bottom doors hide rollouts. All are height adjustable, heavy-duty. I'd never had a pantry before. Now I'm spoiled and can't imagine living w/o one! A walk-in would be nice, but there's only two of us so not really needed. Ten years later I had a handyman built us a custom storage unit for our indoor back porch area. It was such a pain carrying the vacuum up and down stairs, I finally broke down and bought a second upright. I don't have any good photos of it, but half is deep enough for the vacuum and BBQ tools, about 12". The other half has shallow, 7" shelves that store dry goods like spray paints (for DH's hobby), DW tablets, Brita filters, vacuum cleaner bags, etc.

Wait a minute, I always heard that it was bad luck to take the tree and such down BEFORE the new year! I still hear that! Whenever I take my decor at work down before new years I am told that and roundly scolded for it by many random people! Weird. Either way its untrue,so no matter. I take mine down whenever I feel like it. My work decor I may take down on Christmas night if I am working,which I am this year. I might leave it up until after new years. It's such a sad and depressing task that some years I just want to get it over with so I can sulk,and some years I want to be stubborn and leave it up until it truly is no longer reasonable. No one helps me so no one says anything. Not to me anyway. No doubt they discuss it amongst themselves. At home it varies as well. Last year i took all the lights and stuff off the tree around the 1st but I kept the tree for a while. It was a tiny real tree, like I have this year. I just kept it watered until it was clear that it was dying and then I just picked it up and threw it in the woods. It was after Valentine's day...