I used to try and separate them but I usually lost them all that way. There is just no way to untangle the roots of each cutting without damaging them. I just plant them in the ground as one plant. They'll be fine that way.

My son surprised me with tickets to see Aladdin on Broadway yesterday. :) Never mind he's almost 28 years old. He figured we loved the movie when he was a kid, so would enjoy the show and he was right! We did. Afterwards we headed back to the island for dinner in a local restaurant. All in all a perfect day. The only thing missing was my Mom who passed away almost two years ago. I miss her every single day. :) Oh and my memory was jogged about a peach tree we bought the first year we moved into our house when my kids were 2 and 6 years old. Every year we took a picture of the kids in front of the tree until our marriage fell apart. Worst memory? In I should have known at the time? LOL. My son was about 20 months and had quite a vocabulary already. My ex didn't get me anything for mothers day. Not a card with my son's name on it, nothing. I was so mad I confronted him and suggested that the least he could have done was tell our son to say Happy Mother's day to me. He insisted that would be too hard to teach our son. I turned to my son and said, J, please say "Happy Mother's Day." J then said, "Happu Muddah's Day Mommy." For father's day that year, I taught my Son to say, "Happy Father's Day" and found a picture of our son and I snuggling, put it in a cheap frame, wrapped it up, gave it to our son and had our son give it to his father and say, "Happy Father's Day." Needless to say, his father never forgot mother's day again. Too bad it took me another 14 years to see the writing on the wall.

Follow Up: I have been getting daily texts as my mom tries items in her gift ... so far the Strawberry Champagne Jam is the big food winner-- the Louis Sherry John Derian tin was the overall winner (but not the chocolate lol). Blood Orange Confiture - "was delicious on a croissant".. (this was the only one I had tasted myself and i knew it was delicious) Louis Sherry Chocolates - "i have to keep trying them for the surprise flavors" -- when i pushed a little more on whether they are worthy to give again/to others, she said she LOVES the tin but that she couldn't really speak to the quality as her "unsophisticated palate" (her words) prefers Reese's PB cups and Matangos (a local chocolatier .. but very good). I told you she'd be honest! Stonewall Kitchen Strawberry Champagne Jam 🥉- "intoxicating!" "I could eat it with a spoon" To be clear, my mom isn't exactly picky but she has her favorites and sticks to them. She's somewhat open to new things but not at all adventurous. I take this as a win!

Mother's day has come and gone... so should this thread! I am struggling with some of the statements. I justified the reference to our levels of earnings by saying that most of the stuff that we buy using "credit" cards isn't deductible, so using them isn't going to increase our amount of after-tax cash on hand, which will have an impact on our pre-tax income, as well. Almost none of the things we buy are tax deductible, so this is simply not relevant... because it doesn't change between the alternatives. The only way this becomes relevant is if you are taking money out of your traditional IRA to use for interest payments... So the entire before tax / after tax logic pretzel only works for one specific thing that is not mentioned in the original post. Next, a 28% credit card rate is not equal to a 28% savings rate. This is the difference between compounding interest and effective interest. Even though the two are calculated the exact same way, and compounding is a type of effective, compounding grows but effective interest can shrink. Credit cards are basically rolling installment loans with an 8 year and 4 month payback and no early payment penalty. So the total interest you pay on a $5,000 purchase would be $5,892 over 8.33 years. People will often struggle to convert avoidable interest to investment returns, and most people shouldn't need to do this. The easiest way to do so is by using a version of the Modigliani-Miller theorem. If you want to equate a loan into an investment, then just hypothetically use the loan to purchase the investment and find the interest rate where the total payments on the loan = the total return of the investment. The equivalent investment rate of a 28% credit card, is 9.38%. However, if you are not working with the capital structure of a business, that is pretty useless information. Unless you are borrowing to invest, you should just avoid equating loans to investments. It isn't going to provide useful information. ---- Math questions are best solved with math and not an application of some vague wisdom. Interest is not that hard to calculate, so learn to calculate it. There are times when using your credit card is wise and there are times when it is not. Generally speaking though, balances on high interest credit cards are a symptom of another problem. Typically, either frivolous spending or insufficient income. So, if you can, work on that problem first and the credit card problem tends to fix itself.