My Abe Darby has a sweet fruity smell but my soil is alkaline. Glamis castle was very bad smelling indeed and thorny and runty. I wanted Jaques Cartier to grow for me so much but every spring the frosting pink flowers had great big proliferations in each center. It broke my heart. It was not the nastiest rose ever, but it was the most disappointing along with the semi double orange I received instead of Heaven on Earth. Someone said to try patience and see if it would outgrow it, but it never gave me anything but the scrawny orange flowers. Finally, I gave up. Usually my SdLM is looking fine, but in the wet year of 2012, it looked wretched indeed and I wouldn't like to live with it if it was always like that. Same goes for Madame Issac P.

I love the red rings too! They are aposematic coloring, along with the shiny black setae. The Arctiidae are well studied (some of them) for their sequestration of secondary chemicals (allelochemicals) from plants. They sequester pyrolizidine alkaloids, many of which come from the senecio family. They sequester other chemicals as well, such as iridoid glycosides from plantain. The same chemicals as buckeye cats. Some of the Arctiidae are extremely toxic or distasteful. That is why so many of the moths are colorful, such as the virgin tiger moth, the great tiger moth, and even the leopard moth, which in addition to the white and black spots has a lovely blue and red abdomen. Arctiidae also are some of the most polyphagous cats around, with some eating over 100 different species of plants. They also use pyrolizidine alkaloids for courtship and have developed complicated coremata or hairpencils for this. Interestingly enough, milkweed butterflies also use pyralizodine alkaloids as well for both defense and courship. They get them from flowers as adults, which is why monarchs love joy-pye weed and other eupatoriums. I could go on about that but I have written enough of a tome. I love the relationships Leps have with plants. Right now my giant leopards are loving dandelions, which seems to be a favorite of Arctiidae, and easy to supply. I remember Larry saying he fed his Taraxacum officinale, and I had to look it up! Typical Larry, lol! I remember raising an Isabella Tiger moth when I was six years old (to be fair, it was ready to pupate and all I did was provide a container to pupate in). I was disappointed that such a dull moth came from such a pretty caterpillar! Thus it was 30 plus years before I tried that again :)! Dan, I just put in a request to my local library for an inter-library loan. I think this book came from Virginia Tech. These scientific tomes are too expensive to buy. The next one I want is about checkerspots and is like $100. I like butterflies but that is too much to spend on a book! I will try putting the caterpillars in the fridge. Yikes, my fridge is quickly filling up with butterflies, cats, and pipevine (I still have some very small caterpillars). Cheers, Elisabeth

Carolyn, anyone tell you your nuts? :) **** Actually no, no one has although I've been called several other things besides my name, which is Carolyn, not Dr. Carolyn.( wink) So to reward you with being the first to call me nuts I'd be pleased to send you two of my newest varieties not yet in circulation commercially, Anna Maria's Heart and Danko. The first is a lovely pink heart and the second is a medium red heart, both with wonderful taste, at least to my taste buds as well as the person who grew the plants for me ( and kept some at home) and the person who does my seed production for me now that I can't do that stuff anymore. Just send me your home address and the seeds are yours. ( smile) I spent some time looking at your photos and I'm beginning to think that the black dots are where the leaf hairs grow out of and if you look at the fringes of the leaves you'll see what you're calling crystals are really small white globes and they appear on the ends of the hairs that are forming. At least that's what I see. I'm not accustomed to being so up and close and personal with the enlarged leaf surface so it took some time to try and figure it out. The magnification is so large that I never would have seen such microstructure on my own with the unaided eye. Summary: I don't see a problem. Carolyn Carolyn

As some of you have noted, "memorable" doesn't always mean "best." I usually avoid movies that are scary or depressing (life is hard enough!), but one of my most memorable was very depressing: The Pledge, with Jack Nicholson. It was very well done, but I wish I didn't remember so much about that movie! On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I will always remember the blues club scene from Adventures in Babysitting. Elisabeth Shue and crew can't leave the place until they sing the blues. So funny! Million Dollar Baby stayed with me for a long time. And I will never forget any part of the original An Affair to Remember. Ah, Cary Grant!