welcome aboard! You'll probably want flower beds right up against the porch or wherever it is you want to sit and sip your coffee. I wouldn't buy any of the so-called wildflower mixes out there. You'll want easy care plants of a certain size that give you a wildflower look. Most wildflower seed blends give you anything from less than a foot tall to over your head high. An ever changing mix of container gardens would do the trick and you can blend them into whatever size of flowerbed you put in. There is a vast array of winter blooming plants available. Some will suffer if we get really harsh weather but most will bounce back once it warms back up. I would visit any nearby garden center and see what they have on display - most of the ones in the Raleigh area have their winter bloomers in stock. ps - the grass may be brown but it isn't dead, it's sleeping.

George, Jerreth certainly is having a challenging week. It sounds like the power might make it back on before you get home. What wonderful friends y'all have.....loaning Jerreth the RV with its' generator. I'm glad Jerreth is going to be able to save the frozen food. And, putting the refrigerated food in the 5-gallon buckets was a brilliant idea. That's a long way to haul water. So, I guess the two of them are building some serious muscle tissue.....and they don't even have to drive to "the gym" to do it. I know that you are doing terrific work at the Bible Institute and you are fortunate to have a spouse who shares your faith and supports your efforts. It can't be fun to be the one who is "home alone" at this time of year with the risk of ice storms, and I admire her so much for being willing to do it. You said that this is one of the "prices" which you wish y'all didn't have to pay, and I understand that, but we don't really get to choose the price we pay or the challenges we face. I know that Jerreth will come through this challenging period just fine and I suspect she won't even "rub it in" too much that you were off in sunny Mexico doing the work of the Lord while she was here dealing with the mixed blessing of having frozen moisture fall. Look at it this way: The good news, George, is that while you are away in Mexico, all your trees got watered. The bad news is that they got iced too. I hope the rest of your trip is successful and productive and the conditions at "the home place" improve soon. Dawn

We bought a condo last year only to be inundated with cannabis, tobacco smoke and SCENTED THC VAPING. If you google DIY vape scents you will come across “old lady perfume smell” which is the WORST vape scent ever next to STRAWBERRY vape cartridges which completely permeated our entire HVAC system from the owners below AND two floors down. We called the Health Department who contacted our condo management and insisted they post no smoke/vape signs throughout the building. We written the condo Board demanding they seal our HVAC and stop these residents from doing drugs and exhausting them into their range hoods amd through their windows where it gets blown into our ventilation system. It is a near impossible situation. Perhaps there is a way to generate and blow an obnoxious odour or vapour into their units? Sulphur?

84. “"Build a house!" they said. "It'll be fun!" they said. Ha!” That was me. I may also have been the terrified one (21) AND the one driven to sleeplessness, migraines and an upset stomach (83.) They sure sound like me. It's still not fun. We still haven't started. I'm beginning to think I don't even want a lake house. For this amount of money, we could stay in hotels for weeks at a time, all over the world, for YEARS.