On Sun, 30 May 2004 14:20:42 +0100, Rachael of Nex, the Wiccan
Rat wrote:

...Pro burglars go for
specific things - they find out what you've got from various sources
(friends of friends of friends, bods selling lists of addresses that bought
big or valuable items from your local currys or whatever, looking for
packaging in your bins, that sort of stuff).

I know I'm now woefully off-topic, but as a precaution, you
should be careful to put your valuables out of sight before
having tradespeople in the house. (Translation assist: Canajun
"tradespeople" means carpenters, plumbers, flooring installers,
etc. Does the meaning differ in urglish?)

I have a significant collection of X (a highly fence-able item)
that is kept in a separate room in my house; when I had new
flooring put down in that room, the X were boxed and placed in
another room, with a bedsheet thrown over the boxes as an extra
precaution against roving eyes. The special X shelves were
moved down into the basement. Everything out of sight. It's not
that the installers themselves were necessarily dishonest, but if
they were to start talking in a bar "jeez, you shoulda seen this
place I was in the other day, the guy musta had a gazillion X",
you don't know who's going to overhear and investigate the matter
more closely.

To return to topicity: I've indulged in a bunch of new-to-me
fuchsia cultivars this year. There are some amazingly pretty ones
on the market, a far cry from the red-and-purple stereotype. But
you know what? I'm not going to move heaven and earth trying to
winter them over. They're so cheap to buy starts of, and there
are so many different ones available, that I rather look forward
to restocking next spring with a different selection.

I wonder if you UK urglers see the same range of fuchsia
cultivars we get here. California is a hotbed of fuchsia
cultivation because of the mild and (in some coastal areas) cool
misty climate that suits fuchsias very well. I suspect that we
get a lot of fuchsias that originated in California. Do you see
them in the UK as well?


--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
[change "atlantic" to "pacific" and
"invalid" to "net" to reply by email]