Wow, what abusy forum in the last 24 hours! Oh Cynthia, what a disaster! You and your sister must be so disappointed. I hope she isn't in too much pain as well. Good that her kids are stepping up to the plate in her time of need. And the same applies to you V. Good foy you guys to be taking care of MIL. Rotator cuff injuries don't ever go away by themselves (ask me how I know) - sometimes surgery is required but often a course of physio will do the trick. Irt's a long haul either way. Interesting comments about kids and independence. Actually TCS wasn't the problem in the morning yesterday - it was all me! He was standing outside, fed, warmly dressed, teeth brushed, back pack packed and on, while I was still in the house trying to dress the dog (harness, coat, Invisible Boots), looking for my hat and mitts. I walk TCS to the bus and then walk/run the dog before I come home again. I am very pleased with TCS's mornings - he gets himself up, finds clothes, packs his stuff, and will often make his own toasted cheese sandwich, glass of milk and Flintstone. I usually try to keep him on track time-wise, by saying things like "It's coat time, Adrian" or "The hand on the clock is at the 3". That means it's 8:15 and time to be brushing teeth and finding winter duds. He's good at bedtime too, with his music practice, snack, reading etc. although he would keep his light on to all hours to continue reading! And he also takes his own bath, washing his hair himself, although I like to rinse it sometimes, as he does leave some shampoo. He also makes his own bed, it's a sloppy little nest to be sure, but he does do it himself. I think he's doing o.k. for seven years old! It's interesting that I brought up my two kids the same way, because both DH and I worked and sinmply couldn't do everything, and my DD has been very self sufficient since the age of about 17. DS on the other hand.....I'm still working on him *G* I like using the debit cards. We have them only for one bank account, and that is our "disposable" cash. We have another account for bills etc., and a pension goes into each account, with the bigger one into the "bill" account, so the money is always there to pay the monthly bills. My rant is because the "disposable" income always gets disposed of *LOL* This week I saw an ad from the SPCA about a rescued Boston Terrier, and I just love my Boston, so I called to see if maybe we could adopt him. The SPCA wanted an adopti0on fee of $700! Yikes! There isn't that much in the diposable account right now, so I had to send my regrets. Still sad about that one. But that's the way it works. When the dispoable is disposed of, no more spending. Simple. I should just dispose more of it myself *LOL* I really like the HOnda CRV. When we bought the Subaru Forester, it was toss up between it and the CRV. The only reason that the Forester won out is that DH is a big man and he didn't fit well into the CRV driver position. We now have a big horse of a Ford, but still have the all wheel drive. Once you have it, you always want it! DD just bought a Nissan Extrail (I keep calling it an Entrail *LOL* it does have "guts") with the 4 wheel drive. She commutes about 45 minutes to work, including night sifts when the plows might not yet be out, and also drives to the ski hills every week-end. The 4 wheel drive is almost an essential for her in the winter. We went for the $500 deductable beacause we have only had one accident in 35 or 40 years. The difference was about $50 bucks, so in the long run we are o.k. with it. Glad that our little mishap had some good consequences for somebody, PM2! My solarium window faces south east. Too hot and bright for orchids directly. When I do my pelargonium cuttings, I cut a good sized stem, remove the lower leaves, stick on some rooting hormone where I removed the leaves, and stick the stem into the dirt, I mean, earth (sorry, gardeners don't have dirt). I water carefully as they don't like to be very wet. I use clear plastic cups so I can see the root development.I usually lose a couple to "black leg", that is, the stem turns black and rots, but not many. I also water with my leftover Lotus water, which has extra oxygen and apparently has sanitizing effects. This seems to help with damping off or whatever. Glad to hear Ebony is better. I hate my hair. Doesn't matter if it short, long, or inbetween, it always looks lousy. Hmmm, maybe I'll get it cut today. I got carried away with JJobs yesterday, and spent an hour cleaning the grout on the kitchen floor. Looks great - but the tree is still standing in the living room. It's getting really old still having Christmas stuff around - TCS started decorating Nov. 29th!! Our smoke detectors are hardwired into our house, and yes, we do have a carbon monoxide detector too! Gotta run if I want a drive to the hair salon. No time to proofread, sorry if there are mistakes. Later. Julie

Thank you, Jim, for the pics. of your mountain view, very pretty. Your Mr. Lincoln has so many blooms, so the blood meal & Brewer's Yeast works very well. We are lucky to be 73 degree today. Will pick another bouquet of Heirloom, W.S. 2000, and Carding Mill (has 10 buds/blooms). So glad that I bought 4 roses at $17 each (free shipping) from Heirloom ... just learned that they raise the price to $25 each per band !! Bolero rose is worth every cent... I wish I can find roses like that, but in different color besides white. Thank you, Jim, for the article on Rose Midge. I had minor Rose Midge on Golden Celebration early spring ... that's the only spring that I didn't dump new soil, or grass clippings. I'm going to rake leaves and dump around Golden Celebration. Cornell University stated that either too wet (flooding) or too dry will prevent midge-larvae from hatching. When I checked on rose-midge, folks in Rose forum reported that newspaper didn't work. Personally I think that spreading newspaper or plastic will hurt roses, since that block out water. I like eHow approach of dumping soil, or any organic material before the ground freeze ... that way eggs can't hatch in spring. Below is Pat Austin, blooms well in partial shade. It gets 3 hours of sun now, since my tall house shadows it during late fall. Pat blooms well, but it gets too tall in partial shade. In full sun it's shorter ... I gave that second Pat away, since it's a water-hog in full-sun. This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Oct 27, 14 at 10:33

"I'm just incredulous that the police didn't think getting punched in the nose is not assault simply because the victim avoided a broken nose" YEP. I am actually more pissed about it, the more time that goes by. I don't really know what BM said to the police because they talked to me inside and she was out in the driveway. I know she was claiming I HIT HER first which pisses me off because I didn't hit her AT ALL. I covered my face with my hands and ran! LOL. Even SS saw everything that happened and was screaming/crying at his mom to not hurt me. TRUST ME, as loyal as he is to her, if I had hit her, he would have been yelling at ME. But according the cops--it's a "domestic issue" and they told me it's always he said/she said. It also made me angry because one of the cops (there were, like 6 or 7 of them) said "well, if she is so drunk, why'd you let her in the house?" UGH. I let her in and didn't call the police to avoid a SCENE like the one we had! Granted, in hindsight, I shouldn't have let her in--but she was sobbing at the backdoor and then SS SAW her. :( It all worked out really badly. I did the best I could under the circumstances. That one cop was kind of rude to me, I thought, but the others were all pretty nice. The last one to leave did tell me that I have 6 months to press charges. He didn't really say I should or shouldn't, but just said it was an option but that in domestic situations, it is hard to get anything to stick. I am angry the police were not more helpful to ME. MY house, MY driveway, MY yard--she's DRUNK, and I'm SOBER, taking care of two children. Let's see.....who is in the wrong here?

That is an extraordinary story, I'm glad to have a friend here that sent it to me, so glad that I had to come and thank you personally. I've been married for 45 years and know the peace that comes along with being with my soulmate. We're in different worlds now but he waits for me, hopefully at a tree as lovely as the one in this story. Thank you.