My son, the smartest of us three "boys", who wanted no more schooling after H.S., just retired from farming. His son is a teacher, into music, has made his own CD. Brother won't have anything to do with a computer. Actually - if I were going to write him the stuff we talk about in a 20 min. conversation on the phone - it'd take a week. And no instant feed-back. Though I send and receive emails (as far as receiving - like thousands in a month!) I don't do banking online. No one gets my credit card number online, either. Nor do I buy and sell stocks online - (actually, I hardly ever sell 'em). Actually - don't write a lot of cheques, either - giving them to strangers is a risky business, as well. Most of my business is small - and local - so I do it in cash. Haven't got held up, yet. Actually, sometimes I've hitchhiked substantial distances, in which case I have usually distributed some cash in about half a dozen locations on my body - including under an unnecessary bandage on my arm. Lived for several years in south Korea just after that devastating war when there were many desparate people around. Actually, last Saturday was the 55th anniversary of the start of that horrible war. War is hell - as the U.S. will continue to learn for a few years in Iraq. Have a great week - and summer, all. ole joyful

I'm on the desktop. I can sign into GW and read everything, but when I type a comment, it buffers for a while, and then a window pop ups. Unable to Comment. I think it says to refresh, or try again. When I go to refresh it, the window asks if I want to leave the page, and that the comment will be lost. I'll clear the History, Downloads etc and see if that helps. I'm pretty sure I did that anyway, not just the cache.

There must be 100s of places to order from in Australia the shipping alone from NA would be killer.

Michigan is actually very agriculturally diverse and I live in the "fruit ridge", so I can easily get fruit and berries from apples to apricots, cherries to blueberries, beans, asparagus, raspberries, melons. I can't get/grow fresh Meyer lemons and figs, though, except on very rare occasions. My garden provides me with pretty much any vegetable I fancy, except cabbage and brussels sprouts because the groundhogs love them and get them far before they become mature. We have local dairies and so can get any cheese I want, I'm not much of a cheese fan and I did take that cheese making class so I can make mozzarella, feta, ricotta. Cheddar/swiss/provolone/etc can be had at Aldi and it's fine with me. Fortunately, I'm only an hour from Grand Rapids, where I can find Asian groceries, a Mediterranean market, Hispanic items, halal grocery stores, Trader Joe's, Penzey's. The Downtown Market has fresh seafood. The downside is that just because it's available doesn't mean it's affordable, or I'd be eating seafood every day. Somehow Michigan is quite a long way from the ocean, LOL. We also have The Cheese Lady with her 90+ varieties of cheese, many of which I cannot correctly pronounce. (grin) Unless I make that trip, though, my small town is very limited, having no independent or ethic grocers. I would love to get freshly made tortillas, like I did when I lived closer to the migrant centered groceries, and Meyer lemons don't store well, so having them more regularly available would be nice. I don't care about chilies at all, so that's not a problem, but avocados are usually not great, nor is citrus, something about shipping thousands of miles doesn't improve them. jakkom, it's funny about those black walnuts. Here I pick them up in 5 gallon buckets because they turn into missiles when hit with a lawn mower. I dump them in the back of the pasture and hope the squirrels take them. They're a devil to crack, though, I'm assuming you get the nutmeats already removed from the shell? My job used to be to sit on the porch with a hammer, drop a black walnut into a depression Dad made in a board, and whack it until it broke, then Dad would spend evenings picking the nutmeats from the shells and storing them in glass jars in the fridge. I never did like the darned things, too many times whacking my thumb. I probably should have eaten them in revenge! Annie