All I can say is - Wow! I'd read your earlier post about not having to move and leave your new beds, but seeing what you've created there, I have a much deeper appreciation for how happy you must have been to STAY PUT!!! I KNOW that both the seed starting and the planting were TON of work (as only one who has been there can know..) and I am so glad you will be there for year 2 of your perennials. All I can say is that in year 3, you are going to FLIP at how beautiful it is and everyone around you will think you spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on "pop in" perennial plants and will have a hard time believing that you grew each and every cluster of plants from seed. But you'll know...and be SO proud. Oh, and can I borrow that 14 year old boy? And a few of his friends from the sports teams? I went to lift a bale of promix this morning and thought - gosh, I've gotten completely out of shape this winter. Starting the spring planting maddness is going to be rough! A crew of 14 year olds would be perfect.

It really was a dream dinner for me. We had such a fun time that I would like to go back sooner than later. I'll need to wait for another special occasion...My daughter turns 30 next year!! LOL barnmom! Frank was as wonderful on the inside as on the outside! Cathy, Raymond is so funny! I LOL and Charles had to come see what I was laughing about. We both laughed! Peppi, I wish you all could have been there with us. Especially your Mom. Hey who knows, maybe she was:-) Sherri, Yes, I am spoiled to the core by that wonderful man of mine. Thank you for the sweet comments. Thank you everyone for all the birthday wishes and nice things you all have to say. Tonight it will be cake and ice cream with my Maggie!

I don't think those two look similar at all, but I only have a pic of one of them: Love and Peace. Hopefully Seil comes along and shows that gorgeous pic of her Dream Come True. Here's Love and Peace: Truly a beautiful rose, but I finally spaded it because at the end of each bloom cycle, it would instantly get a bad case of BS. Couldn't take it any more, although I miss the rose and periodically wonder if I should try it again. I'm thinking Seil might have said she had BS problems with Dream Come True. I know I seriously thought about getting one after I saw her picture. BS problems is usually the reason why I decide NOT to get certain roses. It was beautiful, however. Kate

Tasha, I'm so happy you're back at home here on GW where you belong. We still have a great group of people here. Good luck with getting the houses moved successfully. That is quite a major undertaking. I do not see snakes as much in open pastureland as I see them on edges where two types of ecosystem come together---for example, the edges where the woodland meet the grassland, or the edges where our short mowed lawns meet tall unmowed pasture grasses. Your son will learn to be careful and watchful with regards to snakes. I know that is true because all outdoorsmen learn that important lesson, whether they are 7 years old.....or 27, 47 or 70. For a long time, I thought that all of the old farmer/rancher crowd here carried guns in their pickups 24/7 because of varmints like coyotes and skunks, and they kinda do, but they mostly carry them because of the snakes. In our early years here, all my old farmer/rancher friends (many of them in their 70s and 80s at the time), would stop by to show me the dead snake they'd shot and placed in the back of their pickup trucks. I believe they did it as a warning to me to always be aware and careful, but it also helped me quickly learn to ID the venomous snakes common in our area. For example, all timber rattlers do not look alike and by seeing the ones they'd shot, I learned a lot about the range of colors and patterns that exist among timber rattlers. Dogs are pretty good about avoiding snakes. I think they are better than cats. When my dogs see a snake, they tend to back away. The idiot cats run to the snakes as if they've found a new toy. We've never had a dog die after being bitten by a snake, though we almost lost one after he went into shock after being bitten on his nose by a timber rattler. Forever after that, for as long as he lived, he wouldn't even get near a black garden hose because it reminded him of being snakebitten. We have lost cats that were bitten, but most of them survived the snakebite as well. Our vet told us that a cat that survives one snakebite usually doesn't survive the second time if it happens to get bitten again, but our cat Spots did survive a second snakebite, and lived another dozen years after the second snakebite. Guineas are crazy, wild, and loud. We had them for about a decade, but heavy predation in a very bad drought year wiped them out. I loved my guineas all the years we had them, but they roamed far and wide and were hard to keep at home, even on large acreage. Luckily, all our neighbors didn't mind the guineas wandering through their property and appreciated that the guineas ate grasshoppers by the gallon. After we lost all them in that awful drought year, I chose not to replace them. It is a decision I am mostly happy with, except when I see baby guineas in a feed store every spring. Then, I toy with the idea of buying some until I remember how hard they are to keep on our property. I'm getting too old to chase guineas up from the road a dozen times a day. I am not sure that chickens or guineas help keep snakes away as most of my snake encounters occur close to the chicken coop, fenced chicken runs or fenced veggie garden. However, they definitely do make a lot of noise to alert you to the presence of the snake. Most of our chickens (and guineas when we had them) also will raise a racket and alert you to the presence of armadillos, skunks, possums, squirrels, coons, coyotes, bobcats, foxes, turtles, lizards, large predatory birds like hawks and kites, and often (sadly) even the falling leaves. Some days, I am exhausted from running outdoors 20 times a day to see why the chickens are having a hysterical fit. Sometimes I do chase off a bobcat or coyote, but more often than not, I can't even figure out why they are gathered up in a tight group, screaming their heads off. For every real danger they alert me to, there's probably 50 alerts that are for stupid stuff like a leaf fell on a chicken's head, or a hawk flew overhead. Our weather seems like it is becoming less and less predictable, and I am very leery of long-range forecasts. I actually believe we need a good, cold winter because we didn't have one last year, but it seems like winters overall are staying warmer than they did even as recently as 10-20 years ago. I'm completely over all the above-average temperatures we're having, but at least sporadic rain is falling and keeping us safe from wildfires, so far. About 12-15 years ago, after spending Thanksgiving up here with us, a cousin of mine said "I want what you have", and she was referring to living in the country. I kept encouraging her and her husband to go for it and find their own little bit of heaven in the country. Eventually they bought 10 acres in Tolar, TX, that had one farmhouse on it (which became her mother's house) and they moved 2 doublewide trailers onto it---one for them, and one for their married daughter and her family. All 3 families had sold their homes in the city in order to pool their money to buy the land and put three homes on it. I don't know if any one of them would have done it without the other two, so it was a perfect decision for them. Having all 3 generations on the same piece of property together has made them incredibly happy and I believe it is a decision they've never regretted. They have had a wonderful life there together on that big family property, and have been able to have horses, chickens, dogs, cats, etc. Their choice reminds me a bit of yours in the way that they put multiple homes for multiple generations together on one place. I hope you all will be as happy on your rural property as they have been on theirs. Be sure to keep us posted on how y'all do with moving the houses this weekend. Dawn