I love the profuse blooms and light yellow of my moonbeam, but my plants always lay over. My neighbors and those in your pictures are all upright. I had a plant in Seattle that was in dry sandy soil and received little to no care. It grew just fine but always fell over onto the sidewalk even though the foliage was brisk and full. We live near the mountains now, where the rain is heavy and saturating at times and frosts can be heavy well into May. The plant is in sandy loam and, like the first one, in hot afternoon sun. It receives more water and care than the other, but I can see no difference in performance. It too blooms beautifully but lays down on the sidewalk. I don't like the appearance when flowers are staked. What's your secret??

I'm surprised to read all these postings talking about rain. It's been bone dry where I'm at--my yard (grass) is brown and crispy and even with faithful watering (as much as I can afford-I'm afraid to see what my water bill is going to be) on my part, all of my plants/shrubs/trees are showing signs of stress from the heat and lack of rain. I've been getting up early (like 5 am) on the weekends to try to beat the heat and work out in my garden--by 11 am, it's too hot to do anything. What I can't figure out is with the lack of water (everything is drying up), just where the heck are all these mosquitoes coming from? And slugs....I've never had problems with slugs before...jiminey crickets!-I'd figure with the heat and lack of moisture they'd just shrivel and dry up. We actually got some rain this morning, but I fear it may be too little too late.... It's depressing, I live all year for summer and my garden, and after enduring months of snow and cold only to have a summer so hot and so dry that it makes me sad to look out and see how bad and unhappy my plants/shrubs/trees are...and there's so little I can do about it.

As has been said before....go to the school board....they made that policy. I volunteered for several years in a program where I ate lunch with elementary grade kids and then spent time reading with them. In this school nearly 90% of the kids were getting free lunch. And the reason why I and the rest of the volunteers were there was not only to boost reading skills but to provide some one on one time and to provide a positive adult role model. The lunches are not horrible...mostly! Things like turkey or ham and cheese sandwich, frozen fruit, or spaghetti green beans a meatball and a cookie, or tacoes or chicken nuggets, corn and mashed potatoes. Apples were always available as was milk both chocolate and plain. There was always white roll or bread of some sort....often a package of teddy grahams. The amount of the food that was tossed was amazing... One little girl ate nothing but bread and chocolate milk....and she was plump. I asked her what her mother fixed for dinner, she said she didn't make dinner so she, the child just got what she wanted to eat. I asked like what....she said pop tarts, lucky charms etc. her mother had no job so all was from wellfare. Another's mother worked at the backery in Wal_Mart so she got all sorts of good stuff. another one time brought his lunch one day because Mom's boy friend had brought Twinkies and Ho ho's or something similar, so her brought that for lunch. I sure am not for banning lunches from home....but as has been said you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. If they are only used to getting garbage at home all the plates of roast turkey mashed potatoes and green beans won't get eaten. Kids who will get a fully subsidized lunch may not eat it and those not eligible may find that $2.25 a day is very expensive. Linda C

I have never had a subscription to a cooking magazine - the only subscription I did have was to Illuminatrice, an Italian lighting magazine, and that was at work. The only magazines that I buy at the newsstand are Italian design magazines, some of which are quite expensive (I used to buy men's Italian fashion magazines, when I was more fashionable), and I have saved every one of them. I also buy Architectural Digest, Interiors, Veranda, etc. when they publish photos of my furniture designs, and I keep these also. My old magazine collection takes up one shelf in my garage, and I do refer to the Italian magazines from time to time for inspiration. I do collect clutter, but books and magazines are not part of that. I have one shelf of cookbooks in the hall next to the kitchen. I once bought a magazine on Feng Shui, but I decided that the magazine was clutter and got rid of it. I spent last week-end trying to declutter my bedroom because I also bought a new mattress that will be delivered tomorrow, and I want my room to look nice. Yesterday I made a runner with the fabric left over from making new drapes for my bedroom (to be able to block out light) and put it on the wide dresser beside my bed. The dresser on the other side of my bed has a runner I made from fabric left over from when I made my bedspread. I find that decorating or trying to coordinate rooms helps me get rid of clutter. However, I did put a bunch of books on the wide dresser using bookends. I don't have room for another bookcase. If I need to get more books, I will get rid of old ones that I have. Lately I have been buying and reading books on Anthropology and early human evolution. I read them at night to help me get to sleep, and so it takes a while to get through them. I cannot stand to watch Hoarders, but I will watch Clean House if I need inspiration to declutter. Making my house and yards look as beautiful as possible is one of my top priorities, and this helps me let go of clutter. I haven't gotten rid of it altogether, however, and so I think it is an on-going process. I have a hard time getting rid of old clothes that no longer fit, and I am convinced that sometime in the near future, they will fit again. Anyway, that is my goal. They may be terribly out of style or inappropriate by that time, however. Getting rid of old clothes is my biggest problem. One of the things I came across yesterday while decluttering was a printout from a Cooking Forum thread from 2005 that I started asking what was in everyone's freezer. It included a post by Ann_T on pitahaya (I happened to have some in my freezer at the time) that she had copied and pasted, bad Google translation and all. The translation was hysterically funny. Lars