Used to visit Grangers and buy from them in the 1980’s when i had my violet business. closed my business, moved from WV to VA and went back to teaching. Unfortunately, due to a house fire in 1990, i lost most of my collection. i have Kilauea (growing babies from bloom stems) , Emilie Savage, Artcturua, Firebird and leaves of Wonderland Would love to purchase Granger’s Heart’s Desire, Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, Desert Dawn, Lavendar Tempest, Garnet Elf, Coralette, and Seafoam Would also like White Madonna (suppose to be their first plant). Bought the original Valencia and Desert Dawn for $50, brought them home, crowned them out and sold the babies Hate that all the Eyerdoms that i knew have passed away. Last i was up there was when they were closing in 1996.

What drive me nuts is when reading real estate listings (I am an agent) someone will invariably write "parkay" floors. I always think of how awfully slippery they must be! They also misspell other commonly used words in our field and I am afraid that the new versions will somehow take hold. Think of good old duct tape. It is now duck tape and commonly labeled that way. I typo all the time and even had to go back to the word "typo" to correct it, lol. However, I do try to catch mine. I see people on FB all the time who seem to make no attempt at spelling or grammar. Frequently they are in college or recently graduated, so you would think they'd have learned by now (my peers' children). I think by the time I was 10 or so, I had a pretty decent grip on the English language. I hate to sound crotchety, but kids these days...... I do my best with our sons (7.5 & 9), but it is an uphill battle with all the errors I catch while watching tv, surfing the web, reading professionally made signs, etc... The younger generation is bombarded with poor examples everywhere they look!

Friedag, thank you for fascinating anecdote about Allingham and du Maurier. I had no idea about their rivalry. I think the two remind me of each other in that Allingham (in my opinion) is trying to write mysteries which can be taken seriously as novels in their own right. In this aspect I think she struggled as a writer, but she did succeed in adding a deeper level to the standard murder mystery. I'm still not sure whether I admire Margery Allingham as a writer, though I loved The Case of the Late Pig. Professionally, she was so eclipsed by Christie and Sayers, that I feel a bit sorry for her. In Dancers in Mourning, for example, her detective Albert Campion finds himself falling in love with the unhappy wife of a man who is a suspect in several murders. Campion agonizes about how to proceed with his investigation, and the reader is meant to sympathize with his personal unhappiness, and his professional scruples. I was reminded of My Cousin Rachel, in that the narrator's shifting perceptions of Rachel shape whether the reader perceives Rachel as a murdering fortune-hunter, or merely as a victim of jealous paranoia. With the exception of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (published at the beginning of her phenomenal career) Christie would not have added such a complex layer of characterization to an already successful formula. What amazes me about Christie is how she was able to churn out 3-4 novels a year for decades without going bonkers at the sameness of what she was writing. (To be fair, Christie was very pressured by her publishers not to stray from her set formula.) I hope to start Sayers in the fall. I have never read Georgette Heyer, but she is on my list of writers to try. Heyer's reputation has improved considerably in the last few years. She is an interesting example of the ebb and flow of a writer's respect among critics and readers. I know someone who helps choose the titles for a local book club made up mostly of career women in their 40s and early 50s. I suggested My Cousin Rachel as a possible title. She crinkled her nose in polite disdain, and made some dismissive comment about Daphne du Maurier's books. It was this incident that made me think she had become "old hat" to contemporary readers. Heyer suffered this same fate for years.

When I was married for the first time 50 years ago, my father's brothers and sisters (I think there were 5-6 still living at that time) gave me a silver tea service. They asked to me choose the one I wanted and I choose Reed & Barton's Winthrop Hand Chased. It is silver plate, not sterling. They were unhappy I got plate - hard to tell them the check needed to be WAY bigger for sterling! It's lived first on a Victorian chest and then on two different side boards for 50 years. My previous side board, though not as fine as my present one, was a better size for a set that is so large - that tray is HUGE! If I were choosing today, I'd choose antique silver-plate and a more classic, plainer style. But I love it and I love that they gave it to me, so it stays on my small sideboard. Here it is decorated for Thanksgiving a few years ago. At the moment, it needs polishing - yard man's doing a major silver polish next Sat!