OK, here's a copy and paste from a post I made back in July to a post started by Miss Sherry about holding willow cuttings. This one was more for collecting cuttings distant from your property and how to get them home fresh, but the technique is the same for cuttings from your own property. . "IMO putting cut LFP in water like cut flowers is not a good technique to use for LFP's and can actually start breaking down the plant rather than helping it. I've posted before on the method I used for many years to keep cut LFP's fresh, often for weeks in the dead of summer and at the end of season even for months. Takes a little work on your part, but robust healthy cats are the reward. If the collection site is a long ways away, take an ice chest with the layer of ice on the bottom covered by a common bath towel folded to a couple of thicknesses for the return trip home (to keep the ice from freezing the plant). Take a supply of trash bags. I mostly used the 7 and 15 gallon kitchen size in opaque white as they store easily and you can see what plant is in them without opening them. Also a supply of paper towel and a squirt bottle filled with clean water. When you gather the cuttings cut the stem with an oblique cut at a length that will fit in the bags unfolded, stack them all together, put them in the trash bags and spray the entire "batch" with the spray bottle. Pour any excess water out, twist or tie the ends and lay them in your ice box until your batches fill it to the top. The paper toweling is in case you have a long trip home. In that case fold and wrap pieces of toweling around the cut end of the bracnhes and soak them with the spray bottle before you put them in the bag and before the final spraying. When I got them home I unpacked and thoroughly washed the cuttings to get any contaminants, pests or predators off them, either in a large sink full of cool water or outside with a garden hose, shook the excess water off and repacked them in trash bags for keeping on the bottom shelf of a refrigerator. If some will be longer term storage wrap their ends with paper towel before spraying. If you make several small "batches" up, and use just one at a time, they others will stay fresh as the day cut with maybe an occasional light spraying every few days. Plant can desiccate or mold in a refrigerator, so the regulation of moisture is important (lean towards less rather than more and just check them more often). In use only pull out enough plant at a time for one change in your cages (I always gave my cats fresh plant at least once a day, more often if they ate it sooner). Close and put the rest of the batch back in cool storage. If the cutting is too long for the cage, cut them in half and use both halves (always putting the down end down). And strip the bottom leaves so only the bottom inch or two is in water. Once you have a feel for what your cats need you can give them only as much plant as they'll consume say 75% of in a day, and that will stretch your cuttings as far as possible before you have to make another trip for plant. Some species of plant hold up better than others, and usually current growth holds up better than old growth. BTW, the wet paper towel trick works very well for small cuttings just laid in containers too, say for early instar larva not yet ready to go to a larger rearing container. Keeps the cutting fresh all day and adds more than enough humidity for the cats. Obviously if you can get your cuttings on your own property they can be gathered, washed and processed daily, but it's still easier to make up a batch all at once to work from until it's used up." . I'll add that for storage I always wrapped cut stems with strips of paper towel and soaked the towel before putting the cuttings in the bag and lightly spraying them for cold storage, even those in my small "batches" that I fed daily from. Takes little effort and adds great benefit in helping the cuttings hold up longer, especially those with woody stems. If you need to hold the plant for many weeks/months, it's a good idea to take all of your plants out, wash them again and repack in new bags every few weeks. My method worked so well that I often held fresh plant well into the deep snow winter months for species that I was rearing successive generations of. I could even hold some plants (like Populus fremontii water sprouts) all winter this way. Larry

Processed lunch meat scares me. I won't say I never eat it but I may buy it once every few months. Same for bacon which I love. I roast my own meat for sandwiches or fry a pork chop and slice that up. or have tuna or salmon. With all the breast and pancreatic cancer in my family I am trying to be more aware of what I eat. I won't judge anyone else for what they eat though. I love candy, and I am sure the sugar is just as toxic to me. I did make a corned beef brisket a few weeks ago and it was really good in a boiled dinner. I didn't dare read the ingredients on the package but the meat was very red. It will be another few years before I might cook something like that again.

The mania of speed today makes living dangerous especially for pets. Even in past years pets were subject to reckless drivers but all drivers were and are not reckless or uncaring. Several years ago my oldest son, Eric, was playing ball near a new road recently opened. Eric always had our Border Collie, Henry, following him. Some kid hit a fly and being an outfielder Eric's only thought was of catching that ball. Well a car was coming down the new road and Eric was in its immediate path. All of a sudden a black and white blur knocked Eric to the ground at the edge of the road and was killed by the oncoming car. The driver immediately stopped and brought Eric and Henry home. Henry of course was dead. The driver happened to be a Lutheran Minister headed back to NYC. He told us that there was no way he could have stopped in time and that Henry had saved the life of Eric. Years went by and we were living in a city so our son got us an Akita puppy. Kita, the dog, saved me a few times, whether it was intimidation by thugs or falling in the yard. That dog had been with us thirteen years when Arthritis Etc. got the best of her. We had her put away. Those two dogs were special to us and our children. One can never come close to imagining the love and devotion a dog has for the family it lives with(in most instances). Hug my dog tonight(?)YES if we still had one! Approaching 80 now and I could not give my dog the attention it would deserve.

LOL oh, knocking over the plates! Although usually we were "good" kids! LOL There wasn't too much trouble but I forgot about doing lunchroom duty. Wiping tables and they had to wear a white towel around their waist. Don't remember if there was a hat. A couple of the school bullies got that and everyone smirked but didn't say too much. Payback y'know! As I recall some did it too for a free lunch or something. So it wasn't always punishment. And oh, the hamburgers! I forgot about those things! They were mostly filler and baked so hard you needed good teeth. The best part was the bun. Junior high had a delicious bun. High school the bun was average but the burgers there were square. They'd bake a pan of this mystery "meat" mixture and cut it into squares. But kids love burgers of any type. Then the fries. Oven baked frozen crinkle cuts so wet and soggy but we always asked for a lot. They'd give about 6 and if you asked for a lot, they might give you one or 2 small ones more and make it look like they were grabbing such a big handful! Should I bring up about the bowls of ketchup they'd put on the tables with the spoon in it? Half the kids would lick the spoon before putting it back. Some had a hobby of spitting in it and see how long it took to dissolve! Needless to say I never used ketchup. By jr. high they learned about the pump tops for the institutional size jugs. Most of the lunch ladies were good but there were a couple of grouchy classics. The one we called hamhocks was never caught with a smile on her face. Never guilty of doing too much work either. Stood around and growled for the most part. There was a BIG addition to the junior high one year. An APPLE MACHINE!! Can you picture the condition of those apples bouncing through essentially a pop machine??? So bruised up, worm holes, and after the initial newness wore off those apples sat in there until nearly rotten. Never any pop machines though when I was in school. I think they did add some cans of juice to it too at the end of my tenure. Although there were plenty of drinking fountains many of us were skeptical on the condition of them, even at that young age! A friend and I were talking about school lunches a while back but I forgot about so many of these things. His mother was such a bad cook, for him school lunch was a real treat. My mother was a fabulous cook so for me it was not quite as big a deal. Fun memories.