Son-in-law who is a SAMI (small arms marksmanship instructor) in the Navy gave me one of his old ones. Now it's no good for long shots, but the bloody buggers sure seem to get the idea when there is semi-auto fire tracking 'em across the yard and up a tree. I do use a tasteful shade of water-soluble green.... ;-)

So cool to hear about your nigra orchard Jacky5! A lot has changed with mulberries for me since I started this thread (under my previous name)... I still prefer the taste of BB mulberries, but they are too tart for everyone else in my family. On top of that, they have turned out to lack vigor and productivity for me. All of my attempts to propagate them have failed, including the air layers, which declined over a few years. Now one of my two established trees has died, and the other is unpredictable. So I have turned my efforts to illinois everbearing and similar varieties. They are much easier to propagate, are very vigorous, and I'm hoping productive here as well. Unfortunately my dreams of rows of bush size BB's propagated from my original trees won't become reality, but I'll likely be picking mulberries of some sort through much of the summer in a few years.

jams and a2gemini - since we were going with slab cabinetry, I agonized over maintaining clean lines, so it makes me exceptionally happy that both of you noticed the 4-drawer lining up with the 3-drawer! Thank you! Holly-Kay - how sweet of you to take the time to comment in light of what you must be going through right now with your kitchen. I very nearly cried when I saw your photos...I can only imagine how you must be feeling. Mgoblue - you are SO right about this winter being brutal. You should have seen how frozen everyone was lugging in all the cabinets from the cabinet maker's trailer on Friday. I managed to make all of them cups of hot chocolate with our makeshift somewhat-kitchen once they got everything in. Winter is a favorite time for me to cook, so it's been tough not having a real kitchen...might be easier to deal with it in the summer since you can do the cook-out thing - not a chance that's happening in this weather! tmy, and fishymom - thanks! Hope to have more progress to post very soon! Our cabinet maker has the patience of a Saint, I swear. I emailed him several times over just those two cabinets...could we put a 3rd drawer in with our induction cooktop? (The answer turned out to be "yes", if we did a cut down drawer inside), and if we HAD to go with a 2 deep drawer unit there, could we "scribe" a line to keep the line appearing to run straight across? (Turned out that we didn't have to, but the answer was "yes" to that also.) We're thrilled to see the grain matching - we didn't see the cabinets through the construction period, so we didn't know how everything would look until they arrived...I think he did an excellent job with that. While our grain (cherry wood) isn't nearly as pronounced as walnut, my husband and I have always loved cherry wood grain and relatively smooth texture and have known from the start that that's what we wanted. While I love the walnut kitchens I have seen here, cherry still won us over. I've already discovered a few "ooopses" - one is that we need a limiter hinge for the upper right door by the fridge. The other one is an issue with the corner LeMans unit (we should have had more fill to allow for our planned pulls...we are probably going to have to get a bit creative with that...solution TBD yet since I just found that issue tonight).

That is truly a spectacular quilt - love the colors you used! You should be proud of that, and the recipient will be thrilled, I'm sure! Now, maybe you need to make YOU one? I think quilts give off pheromones to cats - mine always shows up to be in the pictures, too.