Pam, Elery says you are seeing each other, and that's OK with me. (grin) He keeps me kind of up to date, but with all the political noise out there even he has started doing mostly family and old friends and a couple of sub-groups that don't allow any political issues. Good luck with the vacuum. You need to clean before the cleaning woman comes to clean? Evil Jessica stopped coming here when they linked the forums to social media, not wanting to have all of her information become property of Facebook for whatever purposes they desire. I don't "do" Facebook in part because it's a time sucker and I don't have any time left to be sucked. I do some "hit and run" here, but between Mother, my Clerk job in an election year, the farm and garden and things my kids/grandkids need, well, there's not much time left. I'm glad to see you again, though. Annie

Yes, Ben Casey. Funny how that immediately popped into my mind when I saw it. I liked the show but he was a bit swarthy looking for me. I liked Dr. Kildare, much better looking in my opinion. Certainly better looking than Marcus Welby. I was not particularly interested in their medical skills. My dad was a doctor and would laugh at loud at some of the ridiculous “medicine” that went on in those shows. I remember one show showed some poor soul’s lung X-ray and my dad said it was obviously filled with cancer while the tv docs stood there scratching their heads. George Clooney and Dr. McDreamy could treat me any time.

baby bunnies are adorable so I'm with you there--if it's doing no damage keep it :) as far as irises go I like doing swathes of complementary color--so with my apricot roses I have silverado irises, and with my catmint I have butterscotch orange, and with my pink I have blue irises. I've shoehorned so many plants into the ground that I think they're risking disease from lack of air circulation.....so I may have to *sobs* reduce the number of roses I have. Easy To Grow has a sale on reblooming irises but I'm not 100% how reliably their stuff comes--I was supposed to have ten all white everest alliums to match the two i have....and wound up with ten giant purple alliums instead :p

Just to show how 'ornery' people are, I remember there being a staunch divide between people who favored Sears or "MonkeyWard". (That's how my childhood friend pronounced Montgomery Ward.) Chicago publishing empires nearly bit the dust when catalog business came to an end. The US Mail must have also taken a hit. I suppose the urbanization of America had a lot to do with the changes. Malls sprung up where the new suburbanites could feel the merchandise. Instant gratification beat anticipation. My DM shopped at Marshall Fields and Carson, Pirie, Scott -- both gone now. I remember those department store catalogs. We could easily visit those stores in downtown Chicago, and eventually their branches in even closer malls. We eventually went to a mall Sears for hardware or appliances after the malls put an end to small town stores. An early lesson for me was to be very careful trying on clothes. "They don't belong to us yet, Sue. They belong to Marshall Fields until we decide what to keep." DM was also a pre-Costco mom, ordering a year's supply of hand soap, tissues, and toilet paper 'on sale' from Fields. The big dark green Field's truck delivered whatever we bought in store or by phone. Adults often had store-specific credit cards before they had general bank cards.