I am noticing all the complaints about pop-up ads. That is one thing I am not bothered with...just a few on certain sites. I wonder if it has to do with the ISP. I am using SBC/Yahoo. I love their mail site....very little spam and I mark all I do get so I don't get them again. I have Windows XP-Professional, maybe there is a built-in blocker with that. Just thought I would mention this as a possible solution. I do use Foxfire a lot, but also still use Internet Explorer too. Gld

I hadn't noticed the date ... and thought, "Seems to me that I've heard that story before" ... I had the reply figured/remembered before it came. But still enjoyed it. When I think of how many times some people say that it's not a good idea to bring old stories back to life ... think of how many smiles (and slopped on computer screen) would have been missed today if this one hadn't been. And I'm all a-twitter wondering what the offending message may have said. Quiet, Ed - behave yourself! ole joyfuelled ... with a bit of fun found in retreaded (good) stories

Emmers! Welcome. I cannot imagine moving my 5 cats without serious trauma .. for ME! Good luck with this new home, new place, new people, new everything! It's a wild ride!! Shicksal, what happened with the builder and his estimate? Did you have conversation? I still have a feeling, as someone else mentioned, that the house will be a wreck before anything's done, then what the city will do? require? Who knows. I, too, like MTDoug's philosophy. I am also one of getting rid of crap. ' Texas_Gem, that's wild. I'm willing to bet this weekend you'll be showing us the entire place closed in and ready for insulation! Unfortunately it quickly packs up with new crap. The difficult thing is, too, that I have purpose for the crap. In the last month, I've made several things out of crap, without having to buy anything. Well, the raised garden bed was a bale of hay ($6.00), the potting bench a piece of corner bead ($8.00) and today, inside, my apothecary drawers. I find these spice/apothecary drawers to be the most useless pieces of crap in the world. Almost as useless as base, reach-in cabinets or 12" wall cabinets. However, on a 16' run, they give the eye a break. Plus, I have 4 sets of them. Don't ask. But, I'd already bought the corbels from a true artist on Etsy. Absolutely lovely. No idea what I was going to do with them. I've used primer I have, I'm going to use a SW sample paint for the bottoms, sealing it with the dark, paint base I already have. So, crap already here. I also came to a roadblock with the lovely oak I've been planing. It's dimensional, with live edges. I mean, BARK on the edges!! What can I build to showcase that, since it's incredible? I was planning cabinet doors, probably, but I'd have to joint that off. Noooooooo... Ideas? Hmmm... No phone. Pizza and Martinis? I'll take the latter. YEAH! Martinis and pizza!! What could be better, except talking on the phone with someone about how great it is. Sorry for the inconvenience. I hope all is uploaded somewhere. Shicksal, the reason for stealing the phone isn't to use it, it's to sell it. With a SIM card, anything's possible. Interestingly enough, many phones now have GPSs or programs to shut them down, so even that lucrative activity is slowly thwarted. In the meanwhile, Crap of a different sort. Ok. Off to sand and paint. What can I make with that gorgeous oak? We're talking 6-8' boards. 9-11 3/4" wide.... I have hung 90" of upper cabinets in the last 2 days, though. Gotta put the doors on, but oh, so pretty. And OFF the counter. Cal_quail, I'm so relieved for you. I was holding my breath.

Kim, I've been throwing a lot in the freezer too, but the freezers are filling up fast, so the canning goes on and on and on. I hate it while I'm spending too many hours per day doing it (my feet are old and get tired fast!!!), but later on, when I think of all the home-grown food stockpiled in the freezers, pantry, etc., then I'm glad I took the time to preserve it all. autheray, I haven't seen our baby bunny in a few days, so I think either something got it or it left the garden when I left the gate open. I've never allowed a rabbit to stay in the garden before, but it was really small and appeared to be all alone so I wanted it to gain some size before it went out into the cold, cruel world. There's no longer any fruit low enough on our tomato plants for a bunny to reach them, so I suppose it wouldn't upset me if it was still in the garden. It might have nibbled a couple of cucumbers that were low on the trellis, but it didn't eat any plants. As rabbits go, it wasn't too destructive. I wouldn't want a rabbit of any size in the garden when peas and beans are sprouting as they sure do mow those down. Hazel, I hope the trip was fun and am excited for y'all that you got ripe tomatoes! None of my tomato plants look good. They all have something wrong with them. It doesn't matter. We don't grow them as ornamentals. We grow them to produce tomatoes. So, as long as they are producing tomatoes, I ignore how ugly they get as the season goes on. Tomato plants that look like crap, they have foliar diseases, spider mites and stink bugs galore still are producing huge harvests in our garden and I'm still canning and freezing tomatoes as fast as I can. So, I think that ugly tomato plants are okay, and I'm not willing to use the many kinds of chemicals that might keep them looking better. I think that once plants are supporting loads of tomato fruit, that's where their energy goes---to producing and maturing that fruit. I'd rather they expend their energy on that than on maintaining pretty foliage. Why is it so hot? a) It is summertime. b) It is summertime. c) Refer to a and b. It isn't hot if you stay inside in the air conditioning. Well, it it hot, but the heat is out there in the garden, not inside in the house. It felt pretty nice outside this morning around 7 or 7:30 a.m. when I went out to harvest, but by 9:30 or 10:00, it already felt too hot. Some days I am out by 6:30 a.m. and it feels even better, but I canned all day yesterday and had a hard time getting myself awake, alive, alert and enthusiastic this morning. Well, I was alive, but had to work hard on the rest. I'm supposed to be in the kitchen canning right now, according to the plan I had in my head when I got up this morning, but I'm putting it off as long as I can because I know that once I start canning, I won't stop until dinner time. Rebecca, I let my dill self sow and pop up all over the garden and yard. It seems to germinate sporadically which means I always have dill whenever I have pickles ready to pickle, at least until sometime in July when the dill tends to burn up in the heat. Our first dill plants this year popped up out of the ground in February and have long since gone to seed, but others kept popping up through at least May and those still are providing dill heads for canning and dill weed for drying. Some of the older ones are now going to seed to ensure we have dill next year. Amy, Our chickens ignore fencing. One flew over the 8' fence around the dog yard while I was out in the garden this morning and the dogs killed it. The garden is a long way from the dog yard and I got there as fast as I could when I heard the commotion, but it was too late for the chicken. We have deer netting roofs over all our chicken runs to keep them from flying out of their own runs if they are locked up in them, but I am not going to try to put a deer netting top over the large dog yard. You would think that chickens that have almost 15 acres to room wouldn't go to the trouble to invade a dog yard with 3 dogs in it. Hopefully all the chickens that witnessed the death of their compadre learned from it and won't go into the dog yard. We do all we reasonably can do to keep the chickens safe and yet still allow them to roam, dig, scratch and chase bugs like chickens love to do, but they don't make it easy. Today I only harvested the usual stuff...tomatoes, peppers, green beans PEPH peas and cucumbers, but when I walked up one row picking PEPH peas, I noticed that Lima Beans have set on our Violet's Multicolored Butterbean plants across the pathway from them, so then I went one row over and checked the trellis where we're growing Sieva lima beans and found they had set beans too. That's a relief. I was worried the heat was impeding them, but apparently it isn't. I'm getting tired of having too many tomatoes, but am hoping to have too many butterbeans! Dawn