This is the kind of gift you can't find over at the mall. Well, you know what I mean. Not a box full at a good price. It is wonderful to have someone who knows you well enough to find that perfect unexpected gift!!! Way to go Carol! All the beautiful earthy colors are fabulous! Now you're the proud owner of 56 of them, Mr. Rocky :-) The antique rusty tools will find a good use also I'm sure. Thanks for sharing this very unique and thoughtful gift! ~tenderlee

Well Congratulations! We all need to take time to order a few new things for ourselves:) I know I plan to. Im placing an order for Hoyas the end of December. Let us see pictures!

Jay, Thanks. I hope the greenhouse will give me a new place to play on cool spring days. After a dozen years of carrying seedling flats in/out whenever the wind kicks up too strong or whatever, I'm ready to have a somewhat sheltered place for them. On that horrible wildfire day of April 9, 2009, when all of Oklahoma burned, I carried out my tomato seedlings which were at the tail-end of the hardening-off process. Then, I went into the kitchen and starting preparing food for our firefighters because with winds expected to be blowing around 50 mph by late afternoon, and with a Red Flag Fire Warning, I "knew" it would be a bad day and I wanted to have food ready. My friend, Fran, was at her house cooking as well and we were so proud of ourselves for getting ready in advance. I thought I'd finish cooking, move all the plants inside and out of the wind, and be ready to roll when the pagers went off. My timing was off, though, and the pagers went off while I was cooking and the plants were still outside. I started throwing food and drinks into the truck to head for the station as the fire situation rapidly, rapidly escalated and the call went out to start evacuating homes...... I quickly moved the plants up against the house, hoping it would block the wind enough to protect them. There just wasn't any way I could stay home long enough to carry in a dozen flats of plants. I returned home from the firefield about 12 hours later to many dead or nearly dead seedlings that had been beaten to death by the wind. I hope I don't ever have to go through that again. Luckily, I start way too many seedlings and always have plenty to spare. Still, losing that many of them hurt. That's the main reason for the greenhouse....to give the poor little seedlings some protection from the elements. If I had that day to live over again, I probably wouldn't have carried out all those plants knowing fire was inevitable in those weather conditions. If the weather had performed "as forecast", it would have arrived a couple hours later and I would have had the seedlings back inside. You know how the weather is though....it does what it wants no matter the forecast. Tim recently had to replace the walk-in door on the east side of the barn-style garage back in late summer. It was a really hard job. First of all, the door was not a standard size and the door he picked up at Home Depot didn't fit, so he had to take it back and drive to J&I Mfg. in another county to get a door that was an exact fit. Then, it took him and our friend Jesse about 5 or 6 hours to get that door installed. It ended up taking an entire day, a trip to first Home Depot and then J&I, lunch in town with friends, and a long afternoon/evening of wrestling with that door and getting it installed just perfectly. It is odd how seemingly simple projects turn into major ordeals sometimes. We have a door in our laundry room that has a window, and it would be more energy-efficient to have a solid steel door there, but I'd really miss the light from that window. Dawn

I'm anxious too. It's going to be hard to leave it in the box until Christmas. Cameras have improved so much in the last few years, I'm pretty sure I'll get better photos than I did with my old one. Canon makes a point-and-shoot now that zooms up to 50x (for about twice as much money as I'm spending). That's just hard to believe. My goodness, you could probably take a picture of a bird a half a mile away with that thing. lol I'm putting it on my If-I-Ever-Win-The-Lottery list along with my attached two story sun room/garden conservatory filled with tropical plants. : ) Here is a link that might be useful: Canon with 50x zoom