Its been nice knowing you. ;-)

That's funny. What joepyeweed means is that the reply won't come until the next century. This is a pretty loose forum. A lot of conversation goes on in a few of the threads.

Its been nice knowing you

Hmmm...well....I had a life before I started coming here, I imagine I can have one after. That's assuming I can find it again.

What joepyeweed means is that the reply won't come until the next century.

I'm glad you cleared that up Bill, cause that's not what I thought she meant. :-)

This is a pretty loose forum. A lot of conversation goes on in a few of the threads.

Ohhhh...I know conversation goes on in the threads! But what I'm really thinking about is someplace where you can get to know people or talk about things not SC&M related. I think there's some really interesting people on here that it would be fun to talk with regarding other things (not necessarily personal....well....maybe a little).

Like: Does anyone own one of those Amish fireplaces they've been advertising? Hubby and I've been playing around with the idea of getting one.

Like: What is with Annpat and the whole bread thing?

Like: Is it better to keep your basement heated? I think we should, hubby thinks we shouldn't.

Like: Why is Lloyd spelled with two L's?

Like: Why is JPW's dog so much smarter than mine?

These just don't seem like the types of questions that the more scientific composters would want to hear about. I just thought it'd be nice to have a place to switch over to when some of us are feeling in a more talkative mood.

I had seen an interest in some of the other posts and for me with winter being here (yes...I know it's not cold everywhere) I thought a little chit chat would be fun.

Val - slinking away to her favorite warm spot

Good idea, Val - like it.
I have questions too, but...y'know - they were not "on topic", so didn't seem 'appropriate'.

We're building our house, and going to put in a fireplace, and have looked 'regular' fireplaces, and ventless propane and such. We don't want to burn wood, though.

Haven't found a forum to ask such questions on.
Does somebody have a 'favorite' non-wood fireplace, and WHY is it favored over other non-wood-burning fireplaces?
And what propane log configurations actually look 'real'?

Robert

A live chat area would be a better idea

A live chat area would be a better idea

The problems with live chat as I see it:

1. It's hard to explain to everyone how to use IRC
2. Not everyone can get to live chat at the same time (or they can). Either way it's a problem for me. Your either sitting there with no one to talk to or so many people are chatting at once, you miss something (been there done that).

My vote is still for a "conversation area"

Val

Joepye, depends how long iVillage's memory is?

"Like: Why is Lloyd spelled with two L's?"

Two els? How the heck did that happen?

Loid

Here is a link that might be useful: What it all means.

ROTFL Loid! Good one!

Me thinks I sense some winter cabin fever setting in on this forum already. ;)

Dave

ROFLMHO! Good one LLooyydd!
Kris

Like: Why is Lloyd spelled with two L's?

Thanks Loid - that takes care of one of my questions.

Val

I don't know. I followed Loid's link to what it all means. It led to descriptive words like
mean
grey
male.

Hmmm.....

Karen

I always thought Joe Pye was a 'he'...

{{gwi:319200}}

Robert,
Maybe check out the fireplace forum on the home forums? I don't know if there's anything good on there or not, but it may be a place to start...

Well, Tiffy.....I saw this is one of her posts:

Usually I am running the mower, while my hubs is running the shredder.

So I assumed she was a she.....but in this day and age I guess I shouldn't assume things :-)

Val - politically incorrect

I am a hermaphrodite. A flower with both male and female parts. ;-)

(No offense to actual hermaphrodites, intended.)

OMG tiffy, that photo is precious!

Gee, I thought someone would come at me with a comment about the Joe Pye Weed with a bird... Pardon the pun. (Oh, my bad. eh?)

Idaho,

That photo was taken during Tropical Storm Bertha. At one point we looked out the window and saw these yellow things on the JPW and realized the plant was full of Warblers - about 20 of them. Cute!

Val, I think you have inadvertently established a place for conversation. Good going!! :O)

Tiffy, talk about being blind! I didn't pay attention to that pic very good. I thought it was a butterfly in there LOL. I went back and sure enough, it was a bird. I didn't know those plants got THAT big. Cool!

Val

Val, around here the wild joe pye weed gets over 6 feet tall and absolutely gorgeous in the fall. In my garden I had a shorter variety called "chocolate" with deep burgundy foliage and smaller white flowers. Both types are a nice late forage plant for the pollinators.

Tiffy, I envy you the warbler visit.... :-) Great pic.
Kris

20 Warblers, that is exciting. What kind of warbler is that?

I was looking in my bird book, but there are so many.

Val, That particular Joe Pye was winter sown (as per the Winter Sowing Forum here) and this being it's fourth year it reached beyond the livingroom window (where the photo was taken from) which means it grew to about 8 feet tall. I have seeds if you want to contact me through my page.

Joepyeweed,

Not sure what kind, but a lady on the Winter Sowing Forum identified it as such. I mistook them for American Goldfinches, but she's a 'birder' and I know she knows more about them than I do. :O)

Gosh, I must be blind too when I saw the photo I thought it was a butterfly too. I had to go back and look again!
It really does at glancing look just like a butterfly!

:) Fran

Hey Tiffy - thanks for the offer of the seed. Wish I had a place for it. We just moved into this house last year and it has no landscaping whatsoever.

This past summer we were so busy with some major things to the house (new roof, basement de-watering system, replacing microwave, stove, water softener, hot water heater, cutting down two huge ash trees) that I didn't get anything done in the yard to speak of.

I couldn't even get my vegetable garden in until late fall because we had to have another (funky) tree cut down in the back yard too.

Next spring/summer I'm planning on trying to get some of the hard-scape put in. I'm going to try my hand at putting in brick pathway. Should be fun (not).

I did throw some hostas on the side of the house because one of them belonged to my grandma but that's about as far as I've gotten in getting something planted. Oh yeah! and we had a tree planted to replace the two ash trees.

Anyway, that's more info than you needed, right?

Val

Val,

You never know... Once you start putting those bones in you might like doing it. At least I know I did. Here's some retaining walls built from 'dumpster diving'. Don't have a truck so every AM in the summer of 2003 I'd go and load up the trunk of the car and take a brick manufacturer's garbage home. Loved it!

When we got here in 2001 there were no gardens - not a flower. There was a rock wall which any gardener would OOOH and AAHHH over. Decided to start gardening there first and terrace the back of the first level. Then I wanted a path to work behind that first garden and be able to work the second terrace. Here's a couple of photos... Basically, everything further than the rock wall was built that summer since I wasn't working at the time.

{{gwi:319201}}

{{gwi:240891}}

tiffany, its definitely a warbler. I get goldfinches all the time and its not a goldfinch.

Val and I have discovered that we live fairly close to each other.

So Val, you are telling me that you have a NAKED yard. And I have lots of native wildflower seeds that I could share with you that would be local eco-types.

Dec. 21st, the winter solstice is the optimum time to sow wildflowers. (Its not scientifically optimum, its wiccan optimum.)

JPW,
Finally got the big bird book out and it's a Black-throated Green Warbler. This must be a female since the olive green on the crown and such is described as being 'duller' on them.

I'll be winter sowing a couple of containers tomorrow just for the fun of it. :O) I really enjoy doing it. It's how I got most of the plants in my gardens. (The variegated plant in the second photo up there, Heliopsis Lorraine Sunshine, was winter sown 4 years ago.) Then I take a break for the Holidays and when the new year rolls around I get into it full force. Beats the winter blues!

JPW - yes....I am embarrassed to say "my yard is NAKED". The only thing I hated about leaving my last house was we had a beautiful back yard that we'd worked years on and the front was coming along. I like this house and location very much but you can tell the yard was NOT loved. I would greatly appreciate the wildflowers as soon as I can get some beds in.

As for wiccan.....I'm almost ashamed to tell you that we are going to be taking out a Hawthorn tree next year....but it's just sooooo in the wrong place.

Tiffy - that is amazing how you have taken so many different landscaping blocks and put them together to look so GOOD! In our last house we had a professional do all the hardscaping but this time I'm going to try and do it myself. I really paid attention on how he laid our walkways and paths so I've got an idea on what to do but.....it's a lot of work.

Dig down 10 feet, add 7 feet of gravel then 3 feet of sand, lay bricks, rent a wet saw for the cuts, spread paver sand over all, wet down with buckets of water. (just kidding)

Anyway, with all the additional stuff we had to buy last year, we don't have the money to hire him again (although I think he's the best in the area) so I'm going to attempt it myself. We'll see how it goes.

Val

The temp here right now is -3F windchill of -23F (-19C windchill -30C), ice covering everything, more expected later. I'm getting my info from the local airport which is only about a mile from my house.

I don't even want to think about going out to the compost bin but my bucket is full under the sink. I might just set it on the deck until later in the week.

How's everyone else doing? So glad today is the shortest day of the year, can't wait for it to start getting noticeably longer.

Val

Good morning Val

It is too cold up here as well, -11F with a windchill in the -36F range. But the sun is up and there is about 6-8 inches of snow on my driveway. There is no way I'm going out to clean it at these temperatures!

Looking through all the news reports on the weather, Wow.

Then I come back to GW, kinda neat to scroll through the pictures of the gardens then look out the window at the snow. Kinda surreal.

Lloyd

Lloyd is a misspelling of llwyd, the welsh word for grey. English speakers can't usually pronounce 'll' so they just pretend there's only one L and pronounce it accordingly.

Peterson's Field Guide says that warbler's voice is "A lisping dreamy zoo zee zoo zoo zee or zee zee zee zee zoo zee, the zee notes on same pitch, the zoo notes lower."
:)

My dad had to come stay with us the last couple of days because a limb took his power out. So far, it's still not back on.

Lloyd, I like looking at the pics too. I get lots of ideas from them. Sometimes too many :-)

Val

Hi Val,
I can't remember the last time I posted here but I still lurk often. I have been around long enough to remember when there was a Conversation area here. I'm not sure when or why they removed it.
Jim

OK Paul, I admit it!!! I tried to make the sound of the zoos and zees. LMAO!! You got me. :O)

Did you get those nasty 120 km/hr winds today?? Glad our power stayed on - for once!

Val,
Here's a hosta garden for you.
{{gwi:271354}}

Hi Jim - Well, it will come as NO surprise to anyone that I haven't heard back from any admins about a conversation area but....I haven't given up hope yet.

Tiffy - You are either trying to be mean and cruel showing me that picture....cause you know my "envy" level is just about to bursting.....or......you're just trying to show me one BEAUTIFUL! picture to help my winter blahs. LOL

That is one GORGEOUS hosta garden, lady! Did you bring in those boulders or were they there and you added around them?

Val

Oh Val, My intent is not to tease but to inspire. That area was lawn at the edge of the woods and one day DH's leg went through it. It had been 'infilled' with old logs underneath and 21 cinder brincks. In the spring of 2002, I began digging and found the logs and bricks and underneath was beautiful woodland soil nestled in the natural boulders of our area. I started acquiring hostas from family and friends and there they went. The hosta garden is actually about five times what's in the photo.

Unless I can find something to deter the deers from the hostas, the looks of this garden will be changing in the next two years. I've successfully winter sown some Ariseama Consanguinium (Pitcher Plants), and this year am trying some Rodgersias. Monkshoods and Brunneras will also be added. Looking forward to something new but will surely miss the hostas. Want some??

Well...for whatever reason you posted, it's beautiful. And it IS inspiring. Those pesky deer - cute, but destructive.

Val

Hi Val,
I like this place. Yes, some people posting on GarbenWeb gets highly scientific and in no time we have the "scientists" bickering w. each other. Gives me a headache.

I love your Hosta garden tiffy. No slug/snail problems?
Merry Christmas.
Otis

Otis,

I have slugs and snails galore but I think that using lots of UCGs in my compost which is use to top dress the gardens every spring may be minimizing them. If I go a year without using it, they hit the gardens as though I had laid out a salad for them.

tiffy,
what is UCG?
I am new to forums and I noticed there are a lot of abbriviations used. Getting educated very slowly here, hehe.

Hey Otis - Yeah...I like this place too.

Although sometimes I have a hard time following the scientific people, if you really pay attention there's some interesting things in their posts. Of course sometimes you have to really dig deep LOL

As for the bickering....ahem.....what can I say. Tis the nature of the beast is forums. And I've been known to be in on that bickering once or twice. The best thing you can do if it bothers you is to ignore it. It will all come right in the end.

UCG = Used Coffee Grounds

Below is a link to an acronym page that has some useful ones for this forum.

Val

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Forum Shorthand Definitions

Thanks Val, it is useful indeed.
I will save the UCG from now on to top dress my Hostas. I gave my Worm-Bin UCG only once (a few tbl-sp)and stopped doing it because the old coffee smell it gave my kitchen where I have my bin.
Otis