Upon further observance, it appears I had nothing to worry about. Out of pure curiosity I pulled one of the artichoke seedlings out to see how it was growing. (I have plenty of spares) It had already grown from 1/2" long little thing to over 5"! In just 2 days! I was impressed. I haven't checked on the 3 planted outside, this was one planted inside in a 16 oz cup. If the rain ever stops, I'll go see if the ones outside have surfaced, though I won't be pulling them out of the ground :)

Unfortunately, I agree w/auntjen. My family has doctors in it back several generations (including one ancestor who treated people in both the Union and Confederate armies, believing that people are people no matter what), but they'd all be spinning in their graves/urns to see what's become of "medicine" and associated industries today. Big pharma doesn't feel it really has to "prove anything with science", either, as evidenced by the rampant cheating, misreporting, ignoring side effect reporting, balancing how many lives they can lose before the damages payments become overwhelming, before they have to do a recall, etc. Or maybe they feel the right to prove anything they want with 'science', is another way to look at it. Basically, as auntjen said, profit conquers all. Kind of funny to be warning against alternatives when some big pharma products have *just above* been revealed to be horrendous and decptively advertised. If I had waited for conventional medicine to address my hormonal issues adequately, I'd probably be in a mental hospital by now. Geting a friend's mom's reference to Emerita pro-gest when I was about 40 was the best medical thing to happen to me next to having cancerous moles taken off and a heart attack stopped with incredibly high levels of nitroglycerine. OH, and last month my pharmacy which has known me for about 5 years once again messed up my prescription for something I take every day, giving me a yet-cheaper generic rather than the somewhat-less-cheap generic they had been giving me before, even though I've told them every single month to order the somewhat-less-cheap one for me because the yet-cheaper one just *doesn't work*. Did I check this last month? NO, because I was harried and I guess I trusted them. I know them all by first name, one mom's daughter is on my daughter's XC team...but I was miserable for a MONTH because of human error in mainstream medicine, and because the so called generic "identical" meds, with loads of "science" stats behind them, are anything but. I don't trust any of it anymore.

Sorry everyone, I have been on hiatus for a few weeks here, I got busy and very sick for a while, but feeling better now. Anyway to answer some more questions, I do not have any daughters, both are boys, and a cabin would be nice, but not for the reasons we are talking about. Things have been going pretty good for a while here,my wife and I had a couple of talks and she seems much more receptive and willing, she even admitted that maybe there is a problem. However, this week there was a set back, nothing big, but frustrating none the less. My wife had a bad day with the kids on Wednessday and blew up at me for some pretty minor things. It all started because we were talking about going to my friends Holloween party in a few weeks, we were told there were no bedrooms left to spend the night. One of my firends was pretty upset by this and I stated that I don't think he ever got a room to sleep in anyway. This maded her irate, and I said well i certainly could be wrong, that didn't matter. She yelled at me for 45 minutes and then acted like nothing was wrong, very typical for her. I asked her why she was so mad, and she said I was wrong, I told her that I already admitted that I am wrong and what else did she want. She then started berating me for anything she could think of, she was mad because I was supposed to ask my mother to see of she could babysit for the first weekend in November for the holloween part discussed earlier.. This is my mother's birthday and she always goes up north, my wife knows this, but I went ahead and asked if that was what she was planning to do. My mother told me that she probably would be going up north, in her language that means don't even ask, I have plans. So, I stopped there and left it alone, according to my wife I should have asked anyways and that I tip toed around the situation. To me there was no situation, my mom said she would probably be going up north as she always does. The thing is that my wife does not want to go to this Halloween party anyways, and has expressed this numerous times. I told her that she is not required to go and I am fine going by myself. Then she started yelling abut how I don't tell her all the details she wants to know, I am meeing up with some friends this weekend that I have not seen in 6 months and for fun we are going to a haunted house. My wife want to know why I didn't tell her the time and how much it cost ahead of time, I told her, I didn't know all the details right away and I asked her, do you tell me everything including how much you spend. She looked at me and said no and nothing else. I asked why are you so upset, she said she had a bad day and is just venting, I told her that she can vent anytime she wants, but then tell me about your day, don't attack me on a personal level. That's just not appropriate. Then she jumped back to the original argument about who sleeps in the bedroom at our friends house and says I'm always defending people when she has something to say. I told her I was not defending anyone, I merely thought that our friend never slept in a room. After discussing it with you I admitted that I am wrong. I could go on and on, am I missing something here that my wife is trying to tell me. Because I feel like I'm banking head against a wall. One minute she admits there could be a problem, the next minute she is yelling at me about situations that involve either my family or my friends. If this were her family or friends, there is never any arguing. I'm sorry, I'm just venting , feel free to comment, if not thanks for listening. Regards,

Citrus is like trying to get that unobtainable girl to like you. If you give her too much attention she'll ignore you and die. If you ignore her a little and act uninterested, she chases after you and will grow like crazy. Trust me when I say if you fret too much over the little things you will kill your tree with too much care. Try ignoring it a little bit and it will reward you with growth and flowers. Evan