I have two nurseries that I love to shop when I can. One is a very large, very expensive nursery that always has something unique. The other has a lot of mainstream plants that are kept very well and always very healthy. Now, that being said, most of my plants came from Home Depot. My Dragon Trees came from Ikea, and the others came from clipping of plants that were almost dead in some strange places. Check your local dry cleaners for some VERY old very unique plants. I think it might be something to do with the big picture window, heat, and humidity in those places that some great plants can live. I also prefer to buy plants from these two nurseries in the discount rack or the "NEEDS TLC" section. My Chlorophytum "Fire Flash" was all black with one green leaf when I brought him home. I just harvested a few hundred seeds yesterday. So in summary.... I love shopping at nurseries, but I will get a plant from anywhere I see something I like.

Larry, I agree with ScottOkiemanthat it is not even close to being too late to start peppers. Some years I start tomatoes and peppers together and some years I start the peppers a couple of weeks later, but either way, I don't transplant peppers into the ground until the soil and air temperatures are very warm. Tomatoes can tolerate cooler soil and temperatures down into the 30s, although I don't like to put them out into the ground when it is that cool. Peppers exposed to colder temps will sit and stall and sulk and often remain nonproductive for most if not all of the growing season. The later I transplant my peppers (within reason) the better they produce. Last year I started my peppers at the same time I started my tomatoes, but didn't put my peppers into the ground until early May and yet I harvested just over 10 lbs. of peppers on June 15th. That doesn't seem possible, but it happened, and I kind of think the very warm temps in May 2010 pushed the plants to produce quickly after they were transplanted because it was much warmer here at our house than it is most Mays. Mostly I harvested hot peppers early, but also a couple of lbs. were sweets. Pepper plants that are started indoors and kept warm and then are well-hardened off before going into the ground once temps are very warm just take off like a rocket and start blooming and producing right away. I've also noticed that habanero peppers give me a harvest 4 weeks earlier if never exposed to cold soil or air. Our greenhouse isn't finished yet, but once it is, I can move plants out to it earlier than I do now and leave them there. Right now the tomato plants go outside into the sun/wind for part of each day as a part of the hardening off process and then come back inside onto the sunporch before temps drop in the evening. If it is going to be really chilly, I bring them back into the house. I plant my tomatoes when the air and soil are right for them, but have to cover them up on an occasional cold night because we're in such a low-lying area near the Red River that we often have freezing temps at night the first week in May, about a month after folks on higher ground a couple of miles from us will have had their last freezing nights. I used to transplant tomatoes earlier than I do now, but it is tedious to cover up 100+ plants. Experimenting is fun, and that's when you really learn what you can get away with in your soil and your climate! We are having some exceptionally warm days here already, the fruit trees are blooming, we have butterflies, bees and yellow jackets all over the place and the early spring wildflowers are blooming. However, the nights are still cold. Our nights are hard to predict and the NWS often misses our overnight low by a mile. For last night/this morning, our low was forecast to be 39 and right now it is 30 degrees on the thermometer on our front porch. I never trust the forecast here! If I believed the forecast, I'd lose my tomato plants every year. My first round of tomato plants are large enough now that I could put them in the ground, but they won't go into the ground for about a month yet at the earliest, and perhaps much later than that. It all depends on what the temperatures are doing. By contrast, my pepper plants are about an inch tall, and I am not the least bit worried about how small they are because we are a really long way from soil and air temps being warm enough for them. Dawn

I have an electric pressure cooker. My husband bought it on impulse a couple of years ago after seeing one of those dang infomercials on TV. I wasn't keen on the idea then, but now I've grown to like it. For example, a couple of weeks ago, my hubby had dental work and I wanted to make soup for him, but I couldn't get to the store that day. I noticed a package of short ribs in my freezer, so got them out. I browned them in the pressure cooker while still frozen, added some beef broth, and set the timer. An hour later, the meat was fork tender, and the broth was richly flavored. I quickly shredded the meat, added a couple of cups of mixed frozen vegetables, and soup was ready. I've cooked pot roast, short ribs, turkey breast, and chicken broth from a carcass. It works faster than a slow cooker and works particularly well on tougher cuts of meat like chuck roast. To me, it has two drawbacks. First, you must use a certain amount of liquid in order to create pressure. And the meat itself exudes liquid. So you might end up with more liquid than you want. In that respect it's sort of similar to slow cookers. Secondly, often times the silicone sealing ring takes on the odors of the food just cooked. And it's quite difficult to get rid of the smell. I've taken to storing my ring in a zip-lock plastic bag with cotton balls drenched in lemon and peppermint extract. (FWIW, I never had that problem with the ring from a regular stove top pressure cooker.) So, to me, an electric pressure cooker is not a perfect appliance, but if this one ever kicked the bucket, I'd buy an Insta Pot.

They are both orb weavers. I'm pretty sure that the second on is Araneus diatematus, European Garden spider (common in Europe and North America). The first one is difficult to ID since it appears to be photographed from underneath. But she is sitting in the middle of her orb web. The cute spider eating the fly has got to be one of the jumping spiders.