thank you all soooo much! i appreciate all of the comments! tropiczone- no the tres havent started budding yet but i suppose soon they will as tonight is the last night near the 30s. im soo glad! all the bulbs are coming up and you can def see the sun is out much longer and it is higher! Mrs. Laura- thanks so much! tropical smoothies for a hard worker like you? ANYTIME! haha we love seeing you drive by, your help, encouragement, knowledge...everything you have done to help us! Mr Hardy- thanks a lot for the nice comments, just a lot of time and hard work, but it will all pay off! thanks to everyone again -Justin in Vb

Outdoor dreams??? Well, let's start with the 200,000 dollar + dream backyard/oasis. In ground pool, diving rock, grotto, lazy river, hot tub, etc with the beautifully landscaped yard surrounding it with raised gardens, accent lighting and the gardener/pool boy to maintain it all. More realistic (not NECESSARILY requiring a huge lottery win) would be replacing the chain link fence with a privacy fence for the backyard (8,000-10,0000) and finish having the driveway poured. Our current driveway is mostly gravel with only a small portion of it concrete. We sit on a corner lot and our property is higher than the roads. Our driveway curves from one road to the other, I.e. very long, and expensive to pour. Since our driveway is uphill from all directions, during the winter there are times we can't get up our driveway. Once we reach the concrete, we have the traction to reach the house. The issue is literally timing and gunning the engine at the entrance to the driveway at just the right moment in order to make it from the road to the concrete. I'm hoping that in the next year or two that we can at least finish the concrete to the road on the garage side entrance so we don't have to leave our vehicles in the snow drift on the road and hike to the house. Did I mention that my new stove and fridge are coming on Friday? I will post a picture when they arrive. I'm so excited to finally have new appliances (a first for me) AND they are what I wanted and picked out!!

Terri, consider looking up no-till gardening/farming for the area over your tree roots. Even making a raised bed one or two boards high can give you the space you need to plant, and the plants' roots will take care of themselves. I prefer raised beds, actually, and will be building 3 more this year. I hate the messy edges of directly in-the-ground planting. Got those beds, but I think they look like crap. I think I showed you the raised bed I made last fall, where I used Hugokultur and lasagna gardening methods, didn't I? Hugokultur would be perfect for all the untreated scraps of wood, saw dust, and even brush from cut-down trees. That's why I decided to try it. Can't wait to dig into my new bed to see what turned to dirt over the winter. There's also a preservative called Ecowood ($about $17 on Amazon) that you can spray on any wood. It's nontoxic, environmentally friendly, blah blah. It does weather wood, which I like. It's purpose is that it changes the make-up of the wood so it doesn't rot. It's not a sealant, in that it'll still draw water, but the wood doesn't rot. I used this on my new bed and the giant potting bench I built. I figure what the heck. It got great reviews from long-time users and if it makes my outside stuff last a bit longer, great.

We had a remarkably early stat to Spring this year, even for here. It started with our actual first rain since April '21 - on Oct 15th, 2021, it rained 6 inches here in one day, and two to three times that on the nearby hills where our local water reservoirs are. Unheard of for so much rain all at once for the first rain - usually they are just sprinkles, and the heavy rain does not come until Nov. Anyway, that started all of the plants off. Unfortunately the rain stopped in Jan, and we have not had much since, but we have had sun and medium to warm temps every night, and I can only recall one night with frost the next morning. So, bulbs were starting to come up in Dec., and in Jan many of my teas and chinas were starting to bloom, and the progression has continued. Lovely, perfect weather so far -not hot at all. Want more rain of course, but the blooming flowers and sunny days with perfect temps put a smile on everyone's face. Jackie