Don't forget that Lavendar is also a culinary herb as well. Great in cookies! Needs full sun and absolutely good drainage. I like to cook with fennel (foliage) on fish. There are different fennels - the bulb (large bulb used as a vegetable), the regular, grown for foliage only, and bronze. I plant all 3. Mainly for the Black Swallowtails. If you find those beautiful black, yellow, and white striped caterpillars on dill, parsley (curled mainly), and fennel - you've got black swallowtail caterpillars. You can plant extra for them and most the cats to those plants. This is our state butterfly. Flat leaf parsley is easier to cook with and eat. The curly leaf parsley tends to "stick" in people's throats. I know because I made a dish with it, and nobody could eat it! Big leaf green basil I agree is best for cooking pesto. Mmmmmm, I'm hungry already! I also grow garlic chives and chives, too. Hardy Rosemary can be grown here as well. Make sure you have the hardy cultivars. I grow lots of medicinal types of herbs, too, like Rue, because it is a host plant for the Black Swallowtail as well as the Giant Swallowtail. The butterflies love the blooms on many medicinal plants, e.g., echinacea or coneflowers, and many are quite lovely. A lot of what we grow in the garden is actually a medicinal and/or culinary herb. I also grow plantain for the Buckeye butterflies, but it is edible as well. Curry plant, or helichrysum petiolare(not the flowering straw flowers) can be eaten, too. This is also a host for Painted Lady butterflies. Pleurisy root (or asclepias, or milkweed) was used for just that. However, it is the host plant for Monarch butterflies. The tropical (Asclepias curassavica) is an annual, but it's flowers also attract lots of nectaring butterflies as well. There are several perennial milkweeds, too. Think about foxglove as well, or digitalis (heart medicine). Most people don't actually use these for medicinal purposes anymore, because these plants can be poisonous if not used properly. But, I include them in my garden not only as host plants for butterflies, but because they are beautiful as well. BTW - I have lots of Asclepias curassavica 'Silky Gold' and red/yellow blooms if any wants the seeds. Best planted after frost, directly in ground or pots outside. Susan

I remember visiting friends in Deland, Florida the summer right after high school graduation, and how amazed I was at the humidity! It was unlike anything I'd ever felt here in Texas, and I thought it was unbearable here at home! Of course, that Florida heat/humidity was the perfect excuse for going to Daytona Beach every day during my stay. ;-) As miserable as I feel here in the summer, we're vacationing next month in Puerto Vallarta, where it will be even more swelteringly hot. Oh well. Just as I did during my Florida visit years ago, the tropical heat will provide the perfect reason to visit the pool and beach daily.

Cyn..........I've never had a meal comped or asked anyone to do so. (I've had drinks comped when they forgot, or maybe a free dessert when we all got served at different times, but no meal comping.) I just don't usually have my act together enough to make a kind yet specific remark when they first come by....plus, I usually sense that it's just mechanical and they are moving on. My own issues, yes. And honestly, I pretty much always get good food and even better service. The rare occasion with a problem, we usually just let it go. I will say that when I dined with my DD at a local Bistro/Bakery (very upscale, lunches at about $20) a few years ago, I was surprised that they took our appetizer off our bill but nothing else. There was a fly in my iced tea. I sweetly asked the waitress for another. She brought a new glass. When she came to refill it, she poured in another fly (or the same one???) from the pitcher. I pointed out the fly once again, (hard to do as by this time DD and I were doubled over laughing!) and she almost rolled her eyes at me. Not more than 3 minutes later, the waiter at the next table, a party of 8 Red Hat ladies, dropped a full pottery bowl of salad dressing. Bowl shattered and a shard hit my bare leg, cutting it, and blood ran down my leg. Waiter was horrified and embarrassed, hurried to get me a cloth. One of the ladies gave me a band-aid. (Cut was fairly deep, continued to bleed, seen by waiter as well as whole Red Hat table) We finished our meal and went to pay. They told us they were comping our appetizer. If nothing else, it was a funny story to tell my DH when we got home. Red

I'm back from my trip to Texas. Dallas was great. I did the art museum, arboretum, 6th Floor museum, the geo dome at reunion tower, and the science museum. I really liked the bronze sculptures in Pioneer park. My biggest disappointment was not getting to Kalachandijs. I couldn't make it happen. We spent 2 nights Houston visiting friends. We even went to Kemah. It's rather odd how much I've been traveling this year. I'm really looking forward to just being home, in my own bed, for a few months. Well, I say that now. We'll see how long it is until I get the urge or a chance to go someplace.