What a lovely plaque! Megan is very beautiful. Seeing her picture makes knowing you lost her all the more sorrowful. I am so very sorry for your loss. You know, it is hard to come up with ideas without knowing Megan so I went online to see if I could find anything and found your photo albums on Webshots. Boy, she was a pretty and vivacious girl and very artistic! I can fully understand why you want her place to be very, very special. I found the picture of her headstone, here it is ... I like nanagrandma's idea of the arbor. The stone looks almost black so I think a black metal arbor would be gorgeous with pink roses growing over her headstone. Maybe attach a mailbox to it for the messages like twomonths suggested. You could make color copies of some of her artwork and decoupage it on the mailbox. You could hang small things from the arbor like little angel ornaments, pictures of family and pets and windchimes (maybe a cow or two) too. Depending upon how much room you have for planting, you could even make glass totems on top of a bud vase placed over some rebar pounded into the ground. It could be made of pink and blue glass pieces. That way it would be off the ground and making it easier for grass cutting. I think once you start putting things together, it will give you greater comfort knowing you are keeping her memory alive and staying close to her. Just spending time with her, planting flowers, will help. I really like your idea of making her place something special and uniquely hers.

Thank you all very much for your help. First, I am so glad to hear about the swap meets, they sound like a lot of fun, and a wonderful opportunity for learning and making friends. Fran, I'll be emailing you with the hope of being added to your invitee list for April! Second, I realize that my septic tank description was totally inadequate, so I will try to describe it better and to answer your questions with a bit of history. I hope this doesn't get too long, I have had to learn a lot about septic systems in the last couple of years! I'll ask more questions about plants near the end if you'd like to skip past the septic stuff . . . The house was built in 1938, and has only had 2 previous owners. We have just over an acre, so having most of the back yard taken over by the leach field is not a complete disaster. I do have a front and side yard (dogs allowed on leashes only) to garden in too, thank goodness. I spent last year working on getting the front yard slightly more presentable, and I'd love to have a rose garden at the side. I am working slowly because I do not want to bite off more than I can chew. The previous owners lived here for almost 50 years, and probably did not do anything in the yard as they got older. When they put the house on the market it failed Title V miserably - not surprising. There is some doubt that there ever was a leach field as such. At some point a closed system had been installed with a variance. That was no longer viable, of course, under Title V. For those interested in the history of waste management, the original drainage appears to have been a pipe leading into a meadow owned by a neighbor. We hear that the hay from that field used to be a lot better! We approved the plans for the new septic system before closing and installation began after we closed -- paid for by the sellers. Not unusual these days, but be warned. It is a septic mound with no retaining wall, exactly like the one in the link Sedum37 provided. Yes, the reason for this is that we border on Wetlands. That plan looked fine, with a mound about 4' high on area that sloped away from the house. In fact, we thought it would help level out the back yard with a bit of extra landscaping around the sides. Silly us! Halfway though the installation the work was inspected. Ooops! The plans (the ones previously approved by the town, the Wetlands Protection Committee, and by us) had to be revised. The mound needed to be raised a further 10' to protect the Wetlands. This was not the fault of the sellers, it was just one of those things. We were upset, but we are over it. Ok, so we watched it grow. And grow. Remember the movie "the Englishman Who Went Up A Hill and Came Down a Mountain"? The good news in this tale of woe is that I know exactly where the pipes are on the top of the mound. Also, I was able to work with the installer to grade the side toward the house a little so that it slopes more gradually. Looking out from the back of the house we have a flat area of about 25' before the slope of the mound begins. The pipes are a further 20' back from the beginning of the slope on the very top of the mound. The installer tells me that planting shrubs at the base of the slope is fine, so long as they don't have invasive root systems. I'd like a nicer view from my kitchen and dining room windows than a hill topped with that up-side-down J vent thing! Thus the hedge idea. Back to plants! My plan is to focus on that flat area to begin with, although Diggingthedirt's wonderful ideas for the mound itself are certainly going in the file for future reference! It would be lovely to use it properly, and her ideas are certainly compatible with my plans. I have seen very attractive use of the mounds. I'm hoping that a hedge will create a separate 'room' closer to the house. Last year's culinary herb garden, is just outside the kitchen door. Other than the hedge, I'd love to have separate plantings within that area and I will pick your brains some more in other threads, I'm sure. Claire: Itea Virginica was actually already on my short-list. I just took another look, and it is beautiful. I could use that for the hedge, and the Siberian Iris too, that others suggested, in another area. I'm going to have to plan it out properly. Although I love day lilies, I spent a lot of last Spring clearing orange day lilies that had not been divided in 25 years out of a bed in the front garden, so they are not my top favorite at the moment. The Everlasting Summer hydrangea I planted instead look much better there. I'm sure I'll think of other questions after I hit submit, but this is probably long enough for now. Thanks again, Gillian

A forest will choke out a thicket, I often recomend that fruit and nut trees be planted on purpose, so that we lock up carbon and produce food for ourselves, and chocke out the brush plants that are unpleasent to walk through. When you go on a hike along a tail it seems that you are always either bordered by clearing/lawn or by a thicket, but once you break through that thicket you can useually travle quite quickly and easily and have plenty of space to move about. The main reasonfor removing trees and brush historicly wasn't to make things more pleasent, it was to open up land for agricultural use. with a field we can grow staple cerial grains, or legumes, or use it as pasture for animals, while some trees may provide seasonal food for some critters it takes alot of work to survive off of them year round (and trust me when I say thing, willow does not taste that good) . Our modenr day lawns were not contrived from thin air, you need to look at were they came from to understand how they fit in. Lawns are popular mainly in the south (sure, lots of people like them, but in the south they are sick for them) the south had a large portion of its caucasian inhabitants come from scotland (the southern drawl is very closely related to the scots accent) in schotland they have huge green field that are kept down to a few inches all summer long, this is because there is alot of rain and people raise sheep. Now, in the south there isn't as much water in the summer, and there aren't as many sheep, but people still liked the look of home so a lawn with mowers and irrigation is what they came up with.

My Aunt Lil was famous for her elegant cooking. She died of cancer when I was a little girl. Here, in her memory, is one of our favorites of her recipes, very 1950s but still delicious. My mom gave me the recipe card in Aunt Lil's handwriting. She had written "EXCELLENT" at the top, and we agree. Good luck with your cookbook! Susan in Columbus (Ohio) Aunt LilÂs Chicken Cantonese 1 fryer-broiler chicken  disjointed, slightly salted 1/3 cup cornstarch 1 ½ teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons paprika ¼ cup cooking oil 1 #2 can [20 oz.] pineapple chunks (drained - reserve sirup) 1 cup sliced diagonally celery 1 medium-size green pepper (cleaned & white membrane removed) cut into thin strips 2 Tablespoons brown sugar 2 ½ Tablespoons soy sauce 3 cups hot cooked rice 1. Coat chicken pieces with a mixture of the cornstarch, salt & paprika. Reserve 1 Tablespoon of the cornstarch mixture. 2. Heat the cooking oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Place chicken, skin side down, in skillet. Turn pieces as necessary. When lightly browned remove & place in roaster. Bake, uncovered, at 325° until almost fork Âtender. [40-45 min.] 3. Add pineapple, celery, and green pepper, slipping them under the chicken. Cover and put back in oven for 15 minutes. 4. Mix together the reserved 1 Tablespoon of cornstarch mixture, ¼ cup reserved pineapple sirup, the brown sugar, and soy sauce. Pour over chicken & cover; continue baking another 20 minutes. 5. *Lightly toss the hot cooked rice with 1/3 cup dark seedless raisins & ½ cup coarsely chopped walnuts. Serve with rice on bottom of platter, then chicken. *Raisins and nuts optional