If you've been lurking or been a GW member for awhile, you'll have lots of favorite posts. Too bad I didn't save most of my favorites. I remember posts about gardening naked, Oleander tea, bird poop, and bad neighbors. There was even one on the Accoutrements forum about Virgin Mary and the 7 Dwarfs (or is that Dwarves?). Nothing offensive, just someone needing a replacement for a Snow White garden statue. Fortunately, Marilou has one of my favorites saved in her member page, it's one about garden Heebie Jeebies. Click here A GW search for favorite posts will lead to the following page, scroll about 3/4 down and read the "Dogs in Elk". It's hysterical and gross at the same time. Dogs in Elk Can't wait to learn about more favorites. Maria

When I was a kid, I would go to Virginia with my mom for the months of July and August each year. We lived in NJ at that time. I was an infant the first time I went for a visit and went each year after that. My grandparents had two large fig trees in their back yard and they were against a high board fence where it formed the right back corner of the yard. They were large, brown figs. No special care was given them and they grew just fine over the years. When I was tiny, my grandmother would sit at the small table under the one window in the kitchen and peel the figs and put them into a bowl. As fast as she would be peeling them, I would be reaching up over the edge of the table and taking the peeled figs and eating them. I was never scolded for that--Such a sweet, patient grandma, she was. They laughed at the number of figs such a tiny girl could eat. We would go out and pluck them right from the trees when I was a little older. We would split open the fig skins and eat the pulp off the insides of them and toss the skins away. They were so good and sweet. One person recently said she thinks they may have been Brown Turkey figs because they were evidently cold-hardy, growing with no real care in Newport News, VA, which is on the DelMarVa Peninsula. I now live in Lafayette, LA and have two trees that I think are Celestes, but not sure. One tree came from a friend who went to the property where she lived as a child. They had a big fig tree there where several funny stories of hers came from. The house is gone now, but the big tree is still on the vacant lot. Several years ago, she went to visit the tree and dug up several suckers and took them home. She gave me one and I've named it, Legacy. It's a tough little tree. The other, I got when I went to a craft show here. I was buying some fig preserves and saw a little fig tree in a pot and asked if the man was selling fig trees because my first tree had to be dug up when we built a workshop out back and I missed it so much. He said he wasn't selling trees, that he had brought that one to Lafayette to give to someone, but the person never showed up and I could have it. When I asked him how much it was, he said to just take it. That would keep him from having to cart it back to North Louisiana with them. I've named that one, Lagniappe, which means, "The gift," or, "A little something extra." (Has anyone else ever named their fig trees?) Whenever my figs ripen, I go out back and pick some and when I'm savoring them, I think back to the wonderful times in VA, with my mom's family. Sometimes, I just go out and like to smell the leaves--They have such a special scent to them--Takes me right back to my visits in VA, as well.

I lurk here, a lot. I don't usually have much to say, although I do enjoy your posts. I posted on GJ for a long time, but that was a long time ago. Things evolve, a bunch of new ones join up, and the forum changes. It is the way it is supposed to be, I think. I am coming out of lurkdom to tell you that I do have some of those tires in my garden. They are painted all sorts of garish colors, and I actually grow vegetables in them. My DH cut them for me, and spent time turning them inside-out for me, and I am not going to hurt his feelings now by not using them. Besides, we have the most unbelievable black gumbo soil here. None of this nice sandy loam for us. God gave us soil that has absolutely no air in it, slick as boiled okra when it is wet, adobe when it is dried. So, we grow in raised beds, and these cute little beds are perfect. Fill them with good topsoil, good compost, and we can grow anything. A tire will grow 2 or 3 nice tomato plants, a couple of peppers, a package of lettuce seeds, or beets, or carrots, or maybe an eggplant or a couple of zuchini plants. I can weedeat the pathways to keep them neat. The tires do hold up very well to the punishment of the weed whacker, and they will last longer than all of us will. I guess I could paint them all green so they wouldn't stand out so much, but it's just a vegetable garden. And my grandkids love them. They each have a little salad garden in their own tire! LOL Janie

You rock, JNM! Too funny...and true!