Glad tropical storm Andrea did not cause too many problems for you. Beautiful daylilies all, I will pick Gizmo and Sweet Claudia as favorites. Your photo of Sweet Claudia is so much better than the one AHS has. Avedon

One of the things I got out of the conference was the effects of stress on the body. The one speaker Dr. Michael Roizen (the Real Age guy) said it should be up there with Tobacco as far as workplace health promotion is concerned, even before nutrition and physical activity. I had to introduce a speaker who teaches Mindfullness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at Duke University, and I was very intrigued by her session. It was great to see there is a local class here. The one positive thing about the flu was that I *had* to stay home and rest. It is nice to finally be able to hug and kiss DH again. We are so glad we have another kitty. Coming home to a cat-less house would be even worse.

@rmtdoug - I bought the veneer from Oakwood Veneer. They have more choices than I could possibly list here, but more importantly they have them with two paper backing options - 10 and 20mil. I went with the thicker of the two; it's about as thick as greeting card stock. I have to back up to explain why, because for something like this there are two challenges. The first is, you have to go with something paper backed because contact cement is the only way the material may be applied to something this large. The second is, a LVL is nowhere near perfectly smooth. This one was in the attic for 10 years and had ceiling joists attached to and removed from it so there are nail holes and marks from a saws-all. The thicker backing makes all of that invisible. To prepare the LVL I used a punch to set all nails that were cut off and used spackling to fill pieces of missing wood. On the right side I filled nail holes and on the left I did not, but I can't tell the difference between the two areas. I followed the directions on the contact cement can and went to work. I cut the veneer slightly taller than the actual size of the beam because the ceiling is not perfectly flat. The occasional 1/32"-1/16" gap at the top will be filled with walnut wood filler. The veneer company recommends using a rounded off piece of wood to flatten bubbles instead of a J roller. So far, so good. It was still completely bonded when I left for work this morning. This was surprisingly easy. I should be able to finish the other big side this afternoon and maybe the underside by the end of the day. Looking forward to seeing how the chimney turns out @Texas_Gem - it's crazy to see how fast framers can go, isn't it? How long until they can get a roof on? Are they going to remove the sloped section of the roof over the existing part of the house or build on top of it? Here is a link that might be useful: Oakwood Veneer

Thanks again everyone! Carol, of the three you asked about, right now Tiffany, mainly because it is so prolific and I love the beautiful and fragrant blooms. BB is a good rose and very fragrant, sometimes I'm not very fond of the color, but sometimes it's gorgeous. I had a Beverly a couple of years ago that didn't make it, it was my fault though. I just planted this one this year, think it is going to be a good rose from what I can tell so far. I think they're all great roses, I can see where Beverly could be right up there with Tiffany as it becomes established.