Hi Carol I tried googling the poster you mentioned and nothing came up - in fact, nothing remotely rose related came up, though there were some fun family dinner table conversations to state your "rose" of the day and "thorn" of the day. If you can find a link, you might want to start a new thread on this topic, since people might not find it at the bottom of this one. Resurrecting this one gives the chance to respond to some responses I'd missed back when. Yep, thorns wedged under nails are a nightmare, and once sent me to the urgent care center to get it removed when it got full of pus and infected. My twins were little at the time, so I got to prep them for how mommy had to have the doctor do something owie and she was going to be brave and not even cry (much). They seemed impressed, but it doesn't take much when you're two. All of you that garden in protective gear are of course wise, though I've found that rose thorns can slash you through most clothing if persistent. I remember a rose cane getting stuck under my shirt at pruning time (probably the sneaky octopus Teasing Georgia). THOSE were scratches I was glad not to have to explain to folks at work. Littlelizzy - if anyone asks about the scar, you can say it wasn't suicide but cold-hearted murder attempts by a rose - hey, they're living creatures too! I envy those of you who are careful enough to hold roses barehanded without mishap. I can do it for a few moments, but I'm easily distracted when gardening, and disaster is always looming. And Beth, that brings up an interesting point about rose thorns - sympathies on all the blood, BTW. Have any of you found that rose thorn punctures seem to bleed a lot longer than other types of pokes and injuries? I'll have a rose cane thwack me in the arm and wipe away blood from what seems like a small injury. Then a few moments later, there'll be a pea-sized swelling of blood that trails down my arm. Wipe that away, and it's back a minute later. This can go on for 10 minutes or more at times. I wonder if it's something related to the wedge shape of the thorns, that something that looks relatively innocuous is much deeper or wider than it looks. Regardless, it's one of the necessary hazards of rose gardening. Seil - it's both encouraging and discouraging that these hazards are of my own doing. The positive is that I choose to rejoice that thorns have roses and put up with them for the flowers' sakes. The negative is that I'm doomed once the roses grow up to full height, since I plant everything much closer than custom or common sense would dictate, and I am reduced to a weird weaving stepping around the few tiny open spaces available come fall. No wonder the thorns are out to get me - I've asked for it. Cynthia

Here is what my first pile looked like in May of last year. It was made with fresh grass clippings and loose hay, some leaves and shredded paper. Maybe a little horse poo, but I don't think I had added any of that yet. In the summer when I use grass clippings, I will alternate mowing with the bagger and not mowing with the bagger. This way I am still allowing the lawn to receive whatever benefits it gets from allowing the mulched grass to stay on it and I still get to use some of the clippings for the pile. I have recently started getting coffee grounds from the corner store. I am finding that the pile is staying hotter longer in using them. I don't really know if it's because I am using more greens now or because of just the addition of the grounds. Right now it's at 165.

Well what a great report from you, pitimpinai!! The last I heard you were still very low in energy and still on a ton of medication and little appetite, and listen to you, helping the neighbor till up a lawn! LOL What a nice neighbor you were to plant tomatoes and Dahlias. :-) I am happy to hear that you've also benefited from a shorter work day. Great that you had all that time off saved up. I bet you really needed it to get your energy back. We have gotten pretty much back to what is normal for us here. The weather has been stupendous in the past month! I have never seen the cover crop in the veggie beds so high. We've also gotten all the leaves mowed and collected in bins, ours and three neighbors. [g] We have gotten somewhat cleaned up for the year in the garden, but I keep adding to my list of what I want to get done before the weather turns. Still have a small amount of bulbs to plant and three shrubs to get in the ground, some pots to clean and put away and that will just about do it. I am actually looking forward to a break from the garden. Not that we don't get outside and enjoy it, but it's nice this time of year, to focus on other things. During the gardening season, the garden seems to push out other priorities. [g] I enjoy the winter garden and by the time spring comes, I am just itching to get back to a new growing season. Glad you are able to enjoy gardening again and hope you stay well this winter! :-)

Aunt Jen, Hope you come back here and see this reply to you! This might get a little long, but since every woman is different, I feel like you need to know MY circumstances. I always swore I would never take hormones! I was just going to tough it out. I am 47 and "think" I have been in perimenopause for almost 10 years. I was having super heavy bleeding and it had gotten to the point where I couldn't leave the house for a couple of days, and then it was 3 weeks on and one week off! ugh! My gyn had offered in the past for me to take birth control pills to help with the bleeding. Well I also had a tubal ligation 20 years ago and it just didn't settle right with me to take birth control pills. So I just kept "dealing" with it. Then last year it got bad enough that I was going to have a hysterectomy. I was all prepared, and my mother n law was diagnosed wtih Brain Cancer. My DH was the only caretaker living close by, so I knew I couldn't put him through caring for him dying mom and me trying to recuperate from a hysterectomy and still go to work everyday. So, my gyn and I decided I should try an endometrial ablation. It has been a miracle! I have not had one period in a year's time! woohoo! So I do still have my ovaries. Around Christmas last year, I started having strong heart palpitations in the middle of the night when I would get up to go potty. I couldn't believe that walking like 10 steps to and from the bathroom would cause such a thing, and I was convinced I was fixing to have a heart attack or something major! I went to a cardiologist, and convinced him to do a stres test on me, also a chemical one, and everything showed up fine. My blood pressure was up a little, so he put me on a beta blocker, but it's a low dosage. Then later in the spring, I started feeling sort of dizzy, light headed, like I might pass out...even had that feeling driving to church one morning...that really scared me! I just felt very strange and very wierd. And then at the same time, the hot flashes at night started...it felt like 20 times a night I was pushing the covers down, and then 5 minutes later pulling them back up because I was freezing. Not easy to sleep with all that going on!!! So, it got to the point, I was not getting much sleep, and then during the day, the wierd head feeling( i was convinced I had a brain tumor) was keeping me from functioning. I found myself waiting for my hubby to get home from work, and then asking him to drive me to Walmart or to the grocery store, etc...becaue I was too scared to go by myself, for fear of passing out somewhere. It was awful! Then, I had a breakthrough thanks to ThatHOmesite! There is a menopause message board on here, and I started reading threads there and OMG! There were threads about, wierd head feeling, palpitations, feeling like you are going to pass out...and most of these women were right around my age!!!! I couldn't believe it! So, I printed all those things out, and took them to my gyn at my annual checkup in June. I talked to her about it, and she knew I had never wanted to take hormones, and she was also concerned about be taking them so that they didn't start to build up the lining of my uterus that she had ablated. So she recommended I go to our compounding pharmacy and get a saliva testing kit...it was $170 out of my pocket, but I was so desperate, it was worth every penny! So I spit in a tube, and mailed it off to Oregon. A couple of weeks later, the results came back in and my hormones were WAY out of whack AND my adrenals were exhausted. So to answer your question...=), I am on a progeserone/estrogen cream that I use twice daily right now. This cream is made just for me according to my results. There is also a long questionnaire that you fill out about all your symptoms. I am also on DHEA and adrenal forte, to get my adrenals working the way they should again. I started all this about 6 weeks ago, and the difference it has made in my life has been life changing! I would say I am at least 50% better already, maybe even 75% and I feel so much stronger during the day, I have actually been able to start exercising. Couldn't even do that before! The hot flashes at night have all but gone away...there might be a couple sometime, but they are very mild and I seem to fall back asleep easier than I was. I still wake up during the night now, for what reason I don't know. I am going to try cutting out all caffeine, even though I don't consume much of it anyway. But it came down to quality vs. quantity of life for me, and I wound up choosing quality. I have seen my 91 year old mother, be miserable, with not much quality of life, and I just decided I would rather enjoy my life now, instead of just trying to go for quantity of years and be miserable later. I am still trying to take care of myself, in fact, I feel like doing that now where as before the hormones, I really didn't care! So I hope this somewhat helps you. Sorry it took so long to explain, just wanted you to know my own situation. You have to decide what's best for you!