Well, I did something yesterday that could be considered uh... "eccentric". I mean, what's wrong with postponing breakfast for an hour and a half to take pics of my 2nd instar BST cats??? It seems some people think that to be strange... Oh, well. Maybe through our good examples these [odd] people can be brought to see the light... p.s: I am quickly deciding that the phrase "like herding cats" should (and does) describe multiple situations. It's amazing how hard it is to get 5 BST cats on the first inch of a finger to photograph. After yesterday's experience, I decided to compose a song to the tune of "We Three Kings". It goes something like: We 5 caterpillars of doom/ We'll annoy you greatly/ When you try to take our picture we can move very fast/ chorus:/O-oh, we will move far away/ From where you want us to be/ We'll come and annoy you greatly/ We 5 cats of doom! -Jmcat

Hey Marie - what's the name of the granite farm in Lynnfield? Sounds pretty interesting. In June I posted some pics of our new front walkway and yard. I then spent almost every free minute this hot dry summer planting! Totally crazy but I'm too busy with work in the spring and fall so summer it was. A lot of folks here were really helpful in thinking about what to plant. We ended up with a lot of hostas (an old love), a lot of hydrangeas (a new love), a pagoda dogwood (some folks here suggested), some fragrant azaleas, ferns, daphnes, rhodies, and assorted other things. We have lots of shade, though a little more sun than in the backyard so I got a little more adventurous. My question posted here was about what to plant in the bed center stage in front of our house. We never really "decided" but it kind of evolved. We saw a small red weeping Japanese Maple that we had to have (Tamukeyama). Tagged one at Weston's for the fall, but then found one on sale at Stonegate in Lincoln and bought that. That went in the front of the bed to hopefully someday weep over the big rocks along the walkway. I also wanted a green one to weep over the side wall - bought a very small A J Green Cascade. Not sure how long it will take till they're big enough to really see! Finally we were out in the Berkshires and we saw an older (10 years?) PG hydrangea at one of our favorite nurseries that we totally fell in love with. We had no way of getting it back here, so they're holding it until it goes dormant. Hopefully we can then somehow get it into the back of the Subaru! I'll post when we get everything in, though by that time it might not look like much so may wait until the spring. Today I finally finished planting - moved a couple of things from the backyard. Hurray!!!! We've also been trying to get the thousands of acorns up before they're lost in leaves. I spent most of last spring pulling up baby oak trees. I had the landscaper rake a lot of the leaves into the beds, and he raked the acorns in too. This year I think we're doing it ourselves. What do you all do about acorns? We also tried to move our old kayaks into the back yard. Turned one over and out popped a very frightened chipmunk...

I have always had a portion of my landscape devoted to a "pet cemetary", with one large stone with a beautiful pet epitaph and then smaller individual stones for each pet. We spent much of our time in the garden with the dogs, and each was placed close to a particular plant or thing that they loved- Casey enjoyed eating daylillies, Lola liked to watch lizards from this rock, etc. It's just something I've always done and it will be the first part of the yard worked on in my new home. Plus we have a lot of pets, and the big ones (Wolfhounds) cremains are quite large and heavy- I don't know where I would display them all inside. Plus I can't bear to look at them all the time, either. So I guess it's just 'what I do'.

Hi, I'm new here, too but this struck me kind of funny. I started thinking about the time years ago that I took apart an ugly brass chandelier and used part of it as a candle holder. I spray painted it with that textured metallic paint in a dark bronze color and it sat on the fireplace in my bedroom. Then just a few weeks ago my son had to do a project at school. He chose to do a trophy for the Iditarod dog sled race. We used a wood plaque on the bottom, a block of wood, the t2t candle holder/old lamp part thing, a small Spongebob play ball (I know, crazy, huh?) and a plastic german shepherd on top, then spray painted the whole thing gold! Remarkable how a German Shepherd can turn into a Siberian Husky when it's gold (except for the curly tail)...HA! We...I mean HE...got an A+ on the trophy, I'd call that a treasure 2 treasure. LOL!