Beautiful piece of property. After seeing your photos, reading your wish list and site conditions, I think a consultation with a respected landscape designer from your area would be a great investment with valuable financial return. About 10 years ago I worked with a young couple who had a pie shaped lot that had drainage problems. They also had a whole list of items that they wanted to incorporate such as adding several patio areas, creating paths and de-emphasizing the pie shaped lot. We started with a drainage plan and then worked our way around to planning out the sitting areas, paths, and privacy screening. To mitagate the drainage we installed a collection and disapation system . In its finished state it looks like a dry stream bed. This is something that might be a consideration for your property, but a site inspection with a professional is really needed for most all drainage situations. To de-emphasize the point in the pie a semi circular patio was installed with copious layered planting. This affect may work well in your situation I'll attach a few progression photos so you can see how we sculpted and shaped the land to handle the drainage and pedestrian flow patterns. The pie shaped property - drainage on the left From Before and After Projects Mid way thru the project: From Before and After Projects After installation - one of the sitting area in center of pie shaped back yard From Before and After Projects Detail of the sitting area with water fountain. This could easily to translated into a fire bowl. From Before and After Projects The dry stream bed - collection and disapation system From DRAINAGE Good luck with your project.

CC, I enjoyed the story about "part-time milking" on the website. Took me right back to the farm. Very nearly my first experience with milking was when Dad and my older brother went off deer hunting in eastern Oregon. I know where we were living and I was 6, 7, and 8 while were there. Anyway, they left 3 cows for me to milk and I couldn't have been over 8!! I had 1 (ONE) cow up until that time! Suddenly they were both gone and I had all 3 cows! I doubt if they were gone more than a couple 3 days but this experience left a lasting impression on me! We had 3 farms while I was growing up. Actually, the first one hardly counted because it wasn't ours. Dad worked there a short time so as to acquire some of the dairy herd. Then we went off to a little farm along the Rogue River to start our own dairy. After 3 years, Dad gave up on the dairy idea (heck, what were we going to do with only 3 milk cows?). He got a larger place and picked up some beef cows and a Hereford bull and went into a cow calf operation. It never amounted to much and we kept up to 6 dairy cows so there were always cows to milk throughout my childhood. Anyway, it was fun reading about the Dexter cattle. Gosh, I had trouble milking the Jersey - the teats were so small! Any smaller . . . what's that a 1 finger and a thumb operation? Oh, we had an automatic milking machine but the cows didn't like it, Dad claimed. I wonder if he was lying to us?? Steve's digits

Welcome Sam. I am new to this forum too. Hopefully there will be some helpful information here for us. -Jon

Thank you for your very nice welcome :) Ashelton, LOL, you scared me for a minute there! There are so many choices out there, I did do some research before buying, and of course strong passions go with many brands of cameras. I must admit after reading so many, I was just torn! I deceided to go with the Nikon because it seemed to have gotten great reviews. I realize of course you can have a great camera, but I still have to be responsible to learning how to do things correctly for great photos. I will admit though, (the batttery just finished chargeing and I took a few snap (on auto...no brains required there (blush), but wow, just those quick photo have me very encouraged as compared to my point and shoot by a long shot LOL Juanital, I think I had scrolled down earlier to a post of yours and you said you had a D300, so your words are very encouraging, but I must admit...it is still mind boggling all the choices...methods.. Acckkkkkk! I would have to say that I have a beginner based knowledge of the "art" of manual picture taking, it has been soooo many years of not taking photos, with me taking photos on my point and shoot automatic my brain has gotten mushy on the proper techniques of photography, but I am more than willing to revisit and progress into learning how to do things properly. Thank you for your nice comments on my blog, it is definately a work in progress. Have you bought any other lenses yet to go with your camera?