arial, Forest Farm has an extensive collection of JM (Acer Palmatum). Their catalog has a description of each variety, its foliage colors and growth habits. You can look through there and decide what sounds appealing. Your public library might also have a very good book called Japanese Maples by J.D. Vertrees that describes several hundred cultivars in detail. His couple of pages of discussion of containers state that most types of JM can be successfully grown in containers. He says that the dissectum group (aka thread or cut leaf varieties) and the dwarfs do especially well in containers. Here is a link that might be useful: Forestfarm

I have no furbabies of my own now, but here are the grandpets First, here is Ruby Do. She is 8. I don't get to see her much. She lives with son-in-law 120 miles away. Dinky the Schnoodle at 2 months. She is close by and subject to spoiling by Grandma Dinky this past summer held by Grandma. She is a die hard lap dog.

Carolyn, I've been looking up every title mentioned so far, but just got to Absent Friends this morning. I haven't read any of the novels about 9/11 yet -- I think I'm still a bit squeamish to relinquish that horrendous episode to fiction. However, I will come to that point and Rozan's story certainly sounds interesting. The synopsis confused me, though: is this fiction based on actual people and incidents? disputantum, mysteries or crime or suspense, those noir novels in the anthologies are definitely outstanding in my mind. I think I've read most of them and have seen most of the films, too. In some cases, I think the films improved on the novels, or at least added another dimension of interpretation -- from Nicholas Ray to Truffaut to Robert Altman and many others. I often have a profound distaste for screenwriters and directors who tamper with books, but somehow crime/mystery novels can be tinkered with and played more loosely. Cece, looking at that list of Christie's non-series mysteries: I never realized that she wrote so many non-Poirot and Marple. The thing I love about Christie -- and this may sound contradictory -- is I promptly forget the plots and whodunnit, so every few years I can reread and enjoy them just as much. The only one I remember well is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and I guess that makes it outstanding. But, in a way, that's a shame 'cause I can never be shocked and riled up by it again! Thanks, Cece. The Coffee Trader and Drowning Ruth do look right up my alley. I probably overlooked the latter because it was an Oprah pick -- sometimes my reasoning for dismissing something is initially faulty.

Finished a rather fun read of Love Among the Butterflies by Margaret Fountaine, a collection of her diary entries which detail her wide travels across the world collecting butterflies (and sometimes men). [grin] Fountaine was a vicar's daughter (I think) who grew up at the tail end of Victoria and the beginning of Edwardian days, and as she was not married, she found herself somewhat unoccupied. She started to collect butterflies, and after a while, became a serious entomologist and traveled across the world adding pieces to her large collection. (Lots of overlaps with Edith Holden here.) So - clearly, this is an unorthodox woman for the times: she travels widely to countries not familiar to a lot of people back then, she ends up having a long-term relationship (and traveling with) a man from Syria, she becomes an expert in butterflies... It's quite admirable just how far she pushed acceptability in female terms back then, but it did come with a price. She really struggles to reconcile her love of freedom with the cultural expectations of the time with regard to spinsters and marriage and "suitable" partners. Despite all her travel experience, she stays curiously unhappy throughout her life (at least as told in these entries). She is very defensive all the time, but was heartless to those who kept her close to their hearts. Her Syrian lover could not be publicly acknowledged for many years, and although they travel and work well together, she insisted on them having different rooms and standards (despite their relationship), and she could never grasp that he was in love with her for realz. In their rather frequent seperations, she would drive herself to distraction imagining various horrible scenes involving him and an accident or another woman etc. Fountaine does acknowledge in her diaries that she adores her freedom, but anything that seems to threaten that state of affairs immediately puts her into a tailspin of being mean to her family, friends and lovers, of acting selfishly and generally being a bit of a pinhead. However, just because she was rather an unkind person doesn't make this book any less fascinating. The illustrations taken from her diary pages are intriguing to look at: her writing is immaculate with very few errors and she justifies her handwriting on every page. (Goodness - how to do that without making a crossing-out every now and then, who knows?). She had volumes of diaries and numerous boxes of butterfly specimens that she bequeathed to a museum, but only with the condition that the museum administration do not open the diary box for 40 years after her death. This agreement was stuck to, and so they waited for the correct time. Thus were found the diaries. So - good read overall. Woodnymph - you mentioned earlier that you had a copy but it was only a paperback and had type that was difficult to read. Would you like me to send you this copy? It's only going to the library book sale otherwise,...