One thing I learned from that storm was just to leave them be. There is an antique store in town with some huge mature hosta out front, Sum & Substance being one. They cut all them down after the hail and the next year they were all SO much smaller. I cut one down as a test and it did the same. That one looks small again this year, so I will never do that again. I'd rather look at ratty leaves then have the hosta get set back so radically the next season(s). I think I have post traumatic stress from the event, though. I never used to pay much attention to hail warnings on the TV/radio but now when I hear one, the hair on the back of my neck stands up! Hail is so cruel to hosta gardens.

If your cherimoya is black, then it might be too ripe...or been left out too long. Here at the Asian supermarket is $4.99/lb. Mangosteen shells are usually hard but not hard as rock. If it is too hard then that also mean it been left out too long. The inside should be white and not mushy. If it is mushy, then it's bad. Yellow inside is not good either. Fresh mangosteen here are $9/lb. Canned rambutans are good...better than canned lychee. Canned Longan are also good. Canned fruits at the Asian ranged from $0.99-1.69. Hopefully you did get the green tamarind. Green are usually sour. The brown ones are sweeter. Just break the shell and eat the inside brown parts...do not eat the seeds. If you're living in PA, there are a few Asian supermarkets near in Philadelphia. Also, we have a Chinatown here that offer some of the tropical fruits. Good luck.

I looked into Angie's List several years ago just because I'd been reading about it online and was curious. It didn't take long to run into their explanation to service providers on how to raise their ratings, some of which had to do with their paying money to AL and none of which had to do with actual service provided. I stopped right there. Last year we wanted a particular bamboo floor. We used a Google search to find dealers in our area. There were only two. Both were on the Yelp reviews, which we hadn't gone looking for, but there they were. Each dealer had about five reviews, one all negative and one all positive - really positive. We went there first, bought the flooring, and couldn't have been more pleased. We went back about 9 months later for more. They didn't carry it any more (it was being produced under a different name from a company they didn't have a relationship with), but they helped us figure out what was going on, gave us some numbers, and were good with us hiring their installer independently. They even ordered samples of the new name product for us to verify that it was actually the same as what we'd bought before. Yelp costs us nothing. Here is a link that might be useful: the Yelp reviews

Seventy years ago, folks in cities had little one-horse-drawn covered wagons delivering bread, milk ... and ice. The operator knocked a chunk of ice off of the big block, carried it with a pair of tongs into the houses, and put it into a wooden box with wooden doors that looked much like a modern-day fridge, which was called an "ice box" in many people's kitchens. We folks on the farm had a pan of cool water in the basement to delay the perishing of perishables. Sixty years ago ... they started building fridges. Of the fridges built fifty years ago, many lasted for forty years ... did you hear that - 40 YEARS! The ones that they build now ... last for about ten years. I've told this yarn many times in the past few years (including here), and at about this point in the story, many people make a contribution, and with about half of them, it's the same three words ... ... "IF YOU'RE LUCKY!!"!! I think that we should write to the manufacturers and commiserate with them for having so much stupider engineers these days than they had in days gone by ... one would think that with the wonderful advances that have been made in various parts of the mechanical products system, they have been able by now to have developed some fridges that'd last for many more years. ole joyfuelled