What are these?

[Melissa]

We went to a restaurant this afternoon that had a big bed of these flowers and they had bees all over them and smelled great. What are they?

[Cereus-validus.]

Plain old Alyssum.

Surely you must have seen them before.

[Betsy]

That wasn't very polite, cereus. There's a first time for everything!

[Cereus-validus.]

It wasn't abusive either, sweet little Petootie.

Surely she is old enough to have seen Alyssum being grown in the garden, or, at least, being sold in stores, long before now.

You know the best thing about Alzheimer's is that you are always meeting new people..........and learning new things.............all over again......... for the first time!!!

[Melissa]

Ah, the internet. It allows trolls and abusers to say things they'd never have the courage to say to our faces.

[Bill]

Very true! "Cereus" is one of the newsgroup's resident dirtbag, you can safely disregard anything that he has to say.

Even better, put him in your kill file and be done with him. He escapes from mine frequently but I got him back in there now!

Bill

>

[madgardener]

I met a lady at work the other day that had no idea what the thing I had in my hand was until I told her it was a fly swatter. And when I told her what it was, she wanted to know what it was for. She was serious. And from another country.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who have never seen Alyssum and wouldn't know what it was if it bit them on the ass............

again.........

I have to say that your level of humor today is quite a bit more beneath you than normal Cereus........My mother has Alzheimers now for several years and they are incapable of learning new things. The short term memory receptors are incapable of holding up long enough for cognative learning capabilities. Two year olds are smarter than their capabilities. My mom sees me, doesn't know me, I tell her I'm her daughter, she smiles and tells me how pretty I am, then tells me she has no daughter. If I walk into the kitchen out of her line of sight, she sees me as if I've just walked into the room. She forgot how to walk last October, and asks her baby sister constantly if she has a bed to go sleep in. She doesn't even know where she is. I wonder if she knows WHO she is now. That was a callous thing to say, even in jest. I don't look at Alzheimers as being particularly funny since having someone so close to me having it. These are the years a grown woman looks forward to if she has a good relationship with her mom if the mother is still alive to talk about things past and reflect and learn. I don't have that priviledge or luxury.

I take it you are just being funny about this, but at the rate at which this insidioius disease is affecting people, there will be epidemic cases of it by the time my generation is at the age where the more common of the two kinds strikes. This is why the doctors are working frantically for a cure or preventative treatment, because they know the country isn't prepared for the numbers of the Boomer generation who will require special care.

Off this thread tangent, my cactus, Ariocarpus Furfuraceus bloomed last week and I missed it. Did it bloom because it's been cooler and moister than normal lately? The man who gave it to me said after he purchased it, and it bloomed for him once, it never bloomed for him again. And he'd had it five years. I got it this year, it's sat outside in the sun and rain in a well draining pot of sandy soil and the temperatures here were cooler than normal. It flowered sometime two weeks ago because I happened across the spent white blossom of it when showing a friend how many Euphorbia I've collected lately.

madgardener

[Cereus-validus.]

Poor Bill is the newgroup's resident monkey boy.

He willing to kiss anyone's butt if you give him a quarter!!!