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It seems I've always enjoyed growing things, even when I lived in apartments I had windowsills & porch steps lined with potted plants.

When I moved into my last house, on a 1/4 acre lot in Miami, I spent a lot of time landscaping, mostly with perennials & flowering shrubs. Then I started growing boys, and the bushes had to fend for themselves.

We moved Aug. '03 to our wonderful new home on 1.25 acres. My oldest boy said he'd like to have a vegetable garden, so that's been a big project of ours since Oct. We are also planting bird- & butterfly-gardens and I'm making borders of native flowering shrubs. I like hibiscus in every color & style I can find, & native plants I'm starting from cuttings. My husband likes trees & is busy planting them. Our neighborhood is pinelands, but our lot was cleared of them all & planted with palm trees -- beautiful, but they don't give much shade, nor can you climb or hang a tire swing from them.

We've also grown a beautiful backyard bird bouquet, starting in the summer of '05 with a small flock of laying hens. There's about 25 chickens now, a few roosters and a wide assortment of mostly heavy breed brown egg layers.

I still have boxes to unpack, pictures & curtains to hang inside, but the gardens outside are starting to feel like home! During our opressive So. Fla summers, when the heat, humidity & thundershowers keep us inside, is when I'll get to all those inside chores, cooly admiring our gardens from every window.

The hurricaneS (yes, that's plural) of '04 definately set us back, knocking down some trees, flooding the yard & drowning some plants, and knocking the chicken coop askew. It's been quite discouraging, but replanting has its theraputic benefits for stress & frayed nerves!