As you all know, I 'm not an assiduous forum follower,but seeing as Campanula, like me, seems to be trying to do a very big project on a very small budget, I though I'll throw in my 2 cents. I think the sooner you manage to swallow the Reality Pill, the better it'll be for your wallet. I've wasted an awful lot of money (and worse yet, time and energy) in the 16 or so years that I've been working on transforming a part of my land into a garden. First, it took a while to realize that gardening in the wilds just is too different from gardening in "garden soil"! I'm beginning to think that , for example, direct sowing of seeds may well be impossible for me, at least for several more years,just because there's too much competition from weeds (not to mention brambles and broom and vitalba...)One of the reasons I got so into roses in the first place was that they can hold thier own in some pretty rough terrain. In fact, I'm still at the stage where my focus will remain on woody plants,shrubs and trees. I myself never used herbicide; I always figured that that it was as bad as it's brother "cides",insecti and fungi. I tamed areas of deep bramble jungle by chopping the plants down, and covering them with thick black plastic sheet for a year or so. This year, I'm FINALLY focusing on doing a real mulch job on as much of the cultivated area as I can,using cardboard covered with organic stuff. I'm hoping that over the summer this will tame the weeds enough so that next fall, I'll be able to plant out some perennials among the roses. Eventually I'd love to underplant with perennials as a living mulch... I hope this doesn't sound discouraging; I don't mean it to be so. I think you'll definitely be able to do this, Campanula. I don't follow your threads that much (so please forgive any impertinence), but I gather that your DH and son do help you,and probably in England I imagine that you don't have to worry as much about drought and watering young plants as I do here in Tuscany,so you have several advantages going for you! I guess if I were you, I'd just focus on one small area for my first years' garden,cultivating that, whilst surrounding areas that I was plannig to incorporate into the garden in future I'd begin taming with the chopping/black plastic technique (or whatever other thick screening material you canfind or buy cheaply). Tru, it's not pretty to look at,but you can avoid poisons that way. For the first year or so, you get your Gardening Jollies working on the small cultivated plot, and planning what you'll do with the part that's "cooking" under the plastic. Then, next year or the following, you pull up the covering and can go to it on a larger scale, recycling the covering to do a subsequent area, etc. Good luck,and try not to get too discouraged. "Rome wasn't built in a day" to coin a phrase, lol...bart

No chance of snow here, hot and humid here. I didn't tell the kids but they might have guessed from our shopping trip today. Was looking for Aqua shoes, we found them and have each got a pair. I've been told the water is suitable for swimming but shoes should be worn due to a crustation in the water with a spine on it's back. Also have been told that there are no leeches at this place BUT the last time they were there, there had been reports of a bullshark spotted in the lake. Yes it's a seawater lake. At least if we don't want to we don't have to go in the water then there's no chance of being eaten. There's no bears over here, I don't think I'd want to go to sleep in an area near bears. I also went looking for a billy, we do have some but I doubt that we will be allowed to have a campfire. I'm only taking simply cooked and carried foods. Maybe some bacon, eggs and pancakes for breakfast, cereal, bread, tinned foods. There's shops about 10 minutes away if need be and a seafood co-op too, I'm looking forward to a big meal of prawns.

That omitted some of the classics! Capture the Flag: Everyone divides up into two teams at night. Each team has a "flag" -- usually just a shirt or bandana. The terrain is split up into two sides, one for each team. Each side positions their flag -- depending on your rules, either announcing where it is, or hiding it within certain constraints (say, must be roughly eye level, must be hanging from a tree branch, or whatnot). Usually, no "guarding" of flags is allowed (you can't have a person hang out within, say, ten feet of your flag, although they can pass through the area). If a member of the opposite team is on your side of the border and you spot them, you can "tag" them and bring them to your "jail" -- if you can catch them before they flee back to the safety of their side ;). Jail "guarding" is usually subject to the same constraints as flag guarding. If a person is "jail" is tagged by a member of their team, that person and the person they rescued get free passage back to their side. The winning team is the first one to grab the other side's flag and bring it back to their side without being tagged first. ----------------------- Skits: Classic campfire entertainment. Kids come up with skits to perform in front of all of the other kids (often figured out in advance of the trip if you haven't seen many before). These are generally performed with improvised props (camping equipment) or no props at all. Humor is the most common aspect of them, although sometimes pranks are involved. Googling should come up with a huge list of them. -------------- Commandoes: A game of flashlights. There is one base (a circle of arbitrary radius), one person trying to defend it with their flashlight, and everyone else who tries to sneak into it. Anyone who sneaks into it "wins" and gets to defend the base for the next round. The defender "defends" the base by shining the flashlight around, looking for people. If they tag someone with the beam, that person is "hit" and has to go far away and try to sneak up all over again.

Linda, If you're refering to the fall coming out of the spa, it's not a weeping wall. Our area is so small that we didn't have room for a waterfall, so I had the builder widen the spill from the spa as wide as possible and then instead of stacked stone I had the mason use flagstone (same as the coping) and put it on in this manner. Sticking out, then flush alternating. Each sticking out piece is a couple of inches longer than the one on top of it. This is how we got the bounce of water. He thought I was nuts and it was trial and error as he chipped flagstone and showed me, (A lot of laughing and shaking his head) but now I have the small yard, poor man's waterfall. I'm going to paint the sheer descent to match the rocks and hopefully it will all be one flow effect. I took a close a closer picture if it's something you can use for ideas.