'Garden Peace' is also an herbaceous peony, plant asked about is clearly a tree peony, with characteristic flower structure and typical leaves definitely discernible in original post. There are lots of different garden varieties of peonies, another being semi-double and white does not make it similar enough to one asked about for it to be the same variety. P. lactiflora types (and any other peonies lacking woody stems) are completely up the wrong tree, so to speak.

Hi Melva, Your e-mail didn't make it to me. I just sent you one myself; if you try again and still nothing happens, it could be the Hotmail filter is the culprit. let me know. Ceterum's right about Christmas being a busy season, by the way. I can add that, if there's anything like a normal winter, it can be a very dark and chilly time of year in northern and central Italy. I remember going to Innsbruck from Brescia my first winter here, and how much warmer it was there. And I've frozen in Florence during the Christmas holidays, too. Of course, last winter we didn't have a winter: who knows what this year will bring. Melissa

Lee, Kevin was able to extend his vacation by one day, and so we will be able to go to both Boulder and NM. We'll be arriving in Denver the last Thursday in May (but we don't have our tickets yet), and then Sunday we will go to NM with Nancy to see Aunt Gerry, spend the night in NM and Nancy will be able to take us to the Denver airport on Monday. Nancy is retired, and so she should have available time. This way we can check out of our hotel on Sunday morning, return the rental car, and save an extra day of hotel and rental car that we would not be using. I think it would be wasteful to do it any other way. I'm glad that the dates work for you. I think it should be beautiful at that time of year, but with my luck, it will rain. Nancy said that we could stay with her if she had room, but she sold her house and moved into a retirement villa, which is only one bedroom. I was fine with staying in a hotel, but I didn't want to pay for a hotel in Denver if I would be spending the night in NM. Rental cars are not cheap either, and the money I save can be used on a return trip, if necessary. Ann, thanks for the phone call today - it was nice to hear your voice again. I feel a bit strange that I had to go through the forum to contact people, but at least it works! Unfortunately, I'm not extremely busy at work right now, and so I can have a fairly long phone conversation. I have plenty of projects that I'm working on, but I don't have deadlines at the moment. A fair portion of my time is spent dreaming up new designs, and so it might not look like I'm busy when I'm thinking about what I'm going to do next. For now, I am designing more furniture than they are able to make, and so I spend a bit of time helping production with certain technical issues, particularly with technical writing and documenting warehouse procedures for assemblies or construction. Lars

Love the wavy subway tile and how it sets off your lovely Italian scene, polly! I like the simple tile framing, it just looks right, iykwim. Rose, love your tile mural as well!