I keep my branches as low as possible without touching the ground. That makes sense to me. If I can't mow under it anyway, why not just have a shrub rather than a tree. I might have to bend over more to pick fruit but that can't be any worse than moving a ladder around. Does anyone else keep the branches low like that? Fruithack - What IS under your trees if you don't mulch?

My-brother-law, one of those hands on, turn it to gold guys. Had a fir Christmas tree farm in N.C.. I saw that he mulched his Blue Berries with green saw dust. I told (I was 25)him I had heard that this was a bad thing. He said the small saw mills were all over the hills. That it was not a problem & that he had mulched this blueberry patch for 4 years in green sawdust. Farther more the plants are from Columbia, S.C., they did fine in the mountains, just south of the Tenn. Line. I said,"what everyone talking about?", he said "They do not take care of the plants then blame the GSD. for the harm". He put green saw dust around his trees & some of the vegetables. I now mulch with what I have & do not worry about a little N lost. Another nursery man said he did not see the problem, if the soil is balanced & lose a little N, it will return in a few months. I have no charts or studies to prove this, but both these men have grown plant for over 40 years each. The tree farmer got an offer that he could not refuse & sold the whole 275 acre tree farm. He is now grow 8oo acre muscadines vineyard & has a winery in Ga. The other is 94 this year & often prove that everything that is written, is not a hard fast rule. I was there I saw it for myself. You do not have to believe me, but I was there!

I'm happy to be an enabler. I'm not doing too well otherwise tho. Pain has been off the charts with the back (sciatic) and also the Fibro. Practically been bed-ridden this past week as sitting just makes the back hurt more. On here for 5 min then have to go move around. Its certainly not making me too happy. I think the Fibro Flare is about over at least, just need the fool sciatic nerve to settle back down. Hate being so useless. Thank you for asking, and listening to me whine. hugs,Karen

Wow! You have lots of really good ideas. Some of you seem a little overwhelmed, like I am! Too many good ideas (and getting more every day), not enough time! Luvs, I never thought of actually sitting down with a cup of coffee and looking through my Christmas files (duh) prior to the Christmas shopping season (although most of what I buy is second-hand still there's more selection nearer to the holidays)... Karen--you can fit all your Decor ideas in ONE file???! Dreamgoddess--I love the idea of having all my jottings in one notebook--but once I turn the page the old ones are gone from my memory! You probably (undoubtedly) have more discipline than I have... OA--I do something like you do with the recipes but I use scrapbook software. I'm pleased with that because I can add text and the software treats it like a graphic--lets me move it around, put it on top of pictures, etc., but it still stays editable for when I spot a typo (very irritating to me) or want to rearrange the page. You can also add arrows or circle items in the photo or illustrations, and fancy them up if you want. I save the pages to .jpg files after I'm done. Then I can just view them with the Windows viewer. The disadvantage is there's no way to sort them or search them. I have to put them all in individual folders like Christmas, etc. If I want to have an index I have to make one in Excel or some such. I love the idea of putting all the things for each room in their own boxes. We will be moving into our new home this winter and as I unpack (my very disorganized) moving boxes I'll keep that in mind. Have to go get tons of plastic bins... Minnie tx--Yes. I've organized my articles like that in the past and there's nothing like thumbing through those nice page protectors--makes your pictures look even better. But I have SO MANY! Once I almost completed a system like that and I had 21 3-ring notebooks full and more coming all the time. I've weeded out since then (HAD TO!) and of course since I was younger there's many more formats--dvd's (stuff I recorded off HGTV, for example), Internet downloads, how-to videos on the Internet, of course digital pix that I sneak sometimes in stores, etc. So much mixed media! dd50- you've hit the nail on the head! That's me, wandering around the store, getting ideas, and wondering if I already have the stuff at home. After this over-budget house is finished, I'm not going to be able to afford buying (even something cheap) twice! neesie--DH uses a pencil and notepad for anything he wants to remember, and it works for him, but he's an engineer. They're BORN organized. lynn--I scan pix from magazines and catalogs too (they can sure mount up). But your system sounds so organized. I just finished culling about 300MB of graphics files duplicates that I had propagated all over the disk. BTW, make sure you all have backups. DH made us a little network with a big hard drive so we can back up to it. But if you don't have that, I like the little thumb drives--I got a 4 GB one for Christmas last year. That holds a lot of files! THANKS FOR ALL THE SUGGESTIONS! Seems nothing is perfect. As I mentioned, I'm using scrapbook software which makes graphics and text very easy to handle (OA--if you want "freeform" pages the scrapbooking software is better than a database like Filemaker. Databases usually require you to have your data in fixed format (which you define). For example, at least when I was using databases, you would have to define the number of pictures you could allow in each record. Of course, databases may be a lot fancier now, but their search-sort functions should require some rigidity in the format of each record.) What I really need to find to augment this is a calendar-shopping list-inventory program that takes all those ideas in my brain and makes them usable! - Magpie