Hello All; I still owe Ann some plants as they did not make it in her birthday box but I am leaving on a trip tomorrow until Friday night so it will have to wait until next week. That will at least stretch her month. I am also going to send to Ellie as there are all times when we need that extra boost. She also sent me a wonderful box on my summer birthday. I just went to her page and she has nothing listed but she says she likes flowers and edibles. That gives us lots of leeway. I will check the information I stored on this group in case she filled one out before and I kept it. Anyway, I do have her address if anyone needs it. I also want to do a holiday swap in November or maybe we want to send a little something to everyone that is still part of the group. There are very few of us left I am afraid. Any other ideas? diene

Thanks everyone for the pick-me-up about sis, it is appreciated more than you will ever know. Welcome auntibirrd! So nice to have you are with us. Dawn is such a sweet,generous,and caring person. Please keep us informed about Dawn and baby Schoedel. We got around 11 inches of snow so I just returned home from going to work Thursday night. They didn't plow out the drive way and I was up to my axels in snow. The maintance crew finally got my car out this morning.This is a new home, and go figure, they didn't have a snow shovel in any of the apartments. There is just no place like home, being in warm pjs on a cold day. I'm off now till Monday night at 11pm, I work 12 hrs then off again till Friday night. I'm going to take this time to get out my decorations and at least look at them. I collect them every year from home-made, hallmark, Old World Chrismas and etc. I don't know if I will put up all 6 trees but I do know I will put up at least one. With my brood of cats it is real hard to keep them out of the trees, and they do play havic on the decorations. LIFE IS GOOD, Annie

Donna, I just read your sad news. I'm so sorry about your precious Kate. That's very sad. To all you kitty lovers, I do have a word of caution. I hesitated to write about this but feel it might help someone in the future. Last spring I received a purchased Hosta that had been cut from the mother plant instead of being grown as its own individual plant. This was a first for me. The folks who sent it had dipped or sprinkled some sort of yellow-colored substance on the cut portion ~ likely an anti-fungal or something. Anyway, when Hostas arrive I always let them soak for a day or two in a container on the counter. At the time I had 2 Maine Coons and a rescue kitty. Despite always having fresh water available, two of my kitties sneaked up on the counter and drank the water the Hosta was soaking in. Both were sick immediately and the rescue kitty never did it again. But the one Maine Coon, Pearl, continued to do it whenever my back was turned. I finally figured it out after a few days (it had been raining for days so the plant stayed on my counter longer than usual) and took the plant outside. Pearl seemed to recover initially, but two weeks later she really began to have problems. I won't go into the details but it was awful. After weeks of testing and months of trying to treat her we had to have her put to sleep. Pancreatic failure. She was only 6 years old. Cats will be cats. You have house rules like staying off table tops and counters, cats live by their own rules, at least when your back is turned. Watch out for treated Hostas.

We live on the West side of US19 which makes it an evacuation zone. We've had mandatory evacuation once in almost 20 years and we went to DD's house which is 10 miles from us inland. She ended up having more damage than we did during that time. Water was 'driven' through their brick house. Between her MIL, who was also there, and me, we were spinning water out of towels for hours. Now, they spray the brick every summer with something that waterproofs it. Another time we had a big tree come down during the storm and we lost electricity so had to leave for about 4 days. We'd come back during the day and run the generator for the freezer and fridge. (I don't like doing those sandwiches either.)