Around here the corn burning stoves went into houses like crazy. Corn seems to burn well, much less work than wood, little mess left for cleaning out. Takes small amount of corn to keep the WHOLE house warm. I was rather surpised at how enthusiastic the new owners are over corn stoves. Transportation may not be the whole cost, but tractors are fueled with gas and oil, to work the soil and bring in the crops. Tractors are not especially efficient in fuel usage, cost a bunch to produce those crops. Costs that farmer has to pass to buyers so farmer can at least pay his bills. Hay is supposed to be costing more, I know the truck to go get it runs on fuel that has more than doubled in cost since last year. Much equipment is diesel powered, even costlier than gas. Diesel has always been cheaper to produce, now they just WON'T produce it, keeping cost high. Bush and his Oil friends are making plenty of money. Keeping cost of doing business for truckers very high. Consumers pay that extra. I don't know if Ethanol is going to be cost effective as a fuel. We have a local plant being built 5 miles away, 60 new jobs in a very hard hit job market area. Everyone is excited, but for corn fuel to be useful, it can't cost more to produce than it costs to sell. At least the farmers can sell their product, so many were just losing money planting corn. Prices just never got where you could turn a profit. I buy our grain, mixed at a local mill. No commercial bagged food for the animals so I am not seeing those costs. We use quite a bit of corn in the horse feed, prices seem to be staying higher than other years. I think the oats come from Canada. Not sure why they are not local, we do have oat production. Dry dog food prices are higher, even on the junky stuff. Again, I would point at mostly fuel prices to raise a crop, then transportation to get products to market.

BLUE-EYED BUTTERFLY has been one of my Top Ten favorites for the past three years. You will love it! ROSE MASTERPIECE looks outstanding! Thanks for sharing your photos! Debra

I've learned how to identify plant families, how to propagate plants that I want and how to identify plant problems especially Oak Wilt which is really bad in Texas. Also identifying good bugs from bad bugs which we have alot of here. The soil is extremely important, bad soil, bad garden! Good soil, GREAT GARDEN. Landscape design is something else I learned which I really enjoy and now do for a living. Happy Gardening Yall!

If you see wear on your wood floor after two years, it's time to recoat it, not refinish it. You only get so many resandings. As your kids grow they should get a little more responsible and be easier on the floor. You should evaluate why you have so much wear so you can extend time between recoating. Sand is often the culprit. When I look at floors with wear issues I run my hand across the floor to see if it's clean. Do you have dogs that come in the house after laying in dirt? Do you have mats inside and outside each entry door? How often do you vacuum to remove sand? What do you clean the floor with? Installing new hand scraped factory finished floor would be expensive and would only buy you a little extra time. Once it's scuffed and scratched you'll have to recoat it. Then you'll be in the same boat you're in now. You say you got Swedish finish. Is this Swedish finish as in acid curing urethane, or as in waterborne urethane? If you got waterborne urethane (and you've been maintaining your floor correctly) you could have the floor recoated with a more durable finish like oil-modified polyurethane. You could possibly do one room as a test first. Refinishing your existing floor and staining it dark will not lessen the appearance of dings and dents. For people in your situation I usually recommend they soldier through, maintain their existing floor until the kids get to a certain age (like college age) then have the floors done the way YOU want them.