Thank you Mary, just found the way to Translate!! quickly too, via Hyperlink. Type in the words in the upper right hand corner bar ( there'll be W at the end), scroll down to Translate, then to From English or other language, then scroll to what language to translate it into. LOVE it. Of course not too many ads around the web is a great thing too, thank you thank you Mary. Bea

Really? I'd love to see them. I was so inspired by the ones I saw Katinka do, that I have been scanning like a maniac ever since. I had never seen this technique before and would be very interested to see more. If you remember which threads or if you have links to see what others have done, I would really appreciate it !! Thanks in advance, Peri

Yes, I've been to Kunming before and the botanical gardens there are outstanding. The weather there reminds me a bit of Mexico City without the pollution, where it never gets real hot and it never gets real cool, just in the middle all year long. The Hangzhou botanic gardens are also very nice, but the climate is more seasonal. We have seagulls here in Kansas also(about 440 miles from the nearest ocean at it's closest point, which is the Gulf of Mexico). They love to hang out around the dump though. A large number show at large local lakes also and a few hang around fast food joints looking for scraps. Then there's the large annual migration of Franklin's Gull to and from it's breeding grounds in the central prairies of Canada and it's winter home's of Argentina and Chile(some stay in the Caribbean) which can last for a few weeks in Kansas. Sometimes they continually fly over, especially at night it seems, for hours and hours at a time.

Dogpooponshoes, glad to hear you're ok. Only area of US 90 I've been able to get to so far is by the Bay St Louis/Pass Christian bridge. Of course the bridge is gone. And looks like pretty much every thing for 3 blocks in from the bay is gone or nearly. I'm up in Diamondhead. Fortunately above the storm surge. Am making a futile attempt to protect what's left of the garden from the roofers, fence people, tree cutters. They survived the storm but many are not expected to survive the recovery. (I have a small prince sago, the tree cutter ran over it with a large bucket truck. Survived that. And I'm not sure what the fence people did to it. But it looks a lot worse now. (And I'm not sure where to find another one. Will wait to see if it sends up new growth next spring. Guess I was lucky enough and far enough alone to begin thinking of what to do with the garde. (Replace the magnolia with a few mature palms perhaps. And spend some time going through the Pensacola nurseries this weekend. I did drive down Beatline. The Beatline nursery. The building looked ok. But everything was dead. The oaks weren't the only ones to take a hit. The pines along I-10 look about dead. As you pointed out. There was pretty much of a drought after Katrina. So there wasn't anyting to wash the salt out. Judging from the high water mark on the Kiln/Waveland interchange. The area was covered by about 15 feet of gulf water. Here is a link that might be useful: Mississippi coast