Lock Haven has a university, hospital, river, and state gamelands. If interested, see my blog about our home. Situated in scenic Lock Haven Pennsylvania is this comfortable, large home and public building. For a complete description and many pictures, visit https://fsbo305ciderpressrd17745residentialpubliccombo.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/first-blog-post/ Call owner, Larry Race for answers to your questions at five-seven-zero, two-nine-five, five-two-seven-seven.

If you can get or grow native Texas milkweeds, good for you! Always good to use the plants native to your area. But if not, don't worry, Tropical Milkweed is native to Mexico, which is our neighbor, not far away. There's been a lot of BS printed about Tropical Milkweed, which is unfortunate. The Monarchs are in a big crisis and have decreased in numbers dramatically. I blame Neonicotinoid pesticides, genetically modified crops, Round-up ready crops that have wiped out milkweed in huge areas of agricultural fields, severe loss of habitat...both in the U.S. and Mexico. The fact is, we need to provide the Monarchs with more milkweed (their only host plants) during the times of year when they are here to reproduce. Also, the Monarch butterflies and especially the caterpillars are sensitive to pesticides and every bit of restraint in that matter makes a huge difference. There's been a groundswell of demand among those who want pesticide-free milkweed to find a reliable supply. But still, most nursery milkweeds being sold have systemic pesticides applied at some point before being offered to the public...systemic pesticide doesn't wash off and will kill the caterpillars. And I might add, if you go to nurseries to buy milkweed, you're unlikely to find any milkweed except Tropical Milkweed. Now, in the town of Medina, there's a nursery where you can find native milkweeds that are safe for Monarchs. It's called Medina Garden Nursery. http://medinagardennursery.com/about-us/ Or you can get seeds and grow your own milkweeds. I've had Monarchs come by three times this year and lay eggs on my milkweed here. I have native Texas Milkweed and Antelope Horns, which are perennials. There are many native Texas milkweeds...they're just harder to get. I also grow Tropical Milkweed and have never had a problem with Monarchs lingering to spend the winter here. It is an annual in most of the country, but can survive winters when temps don't get very low. Since I live in the hills where it's a bit colder, they will often die here if not protected. I haven't seen any Monarchs yet this fall, but the peak month for fall migration is usually October, so they're probably coming through. There's just much much fewer Monarchs than there used to be, so you might have to really watch carefully to spot any. They need our help. The Monarchs that are just passing through headed to Mexico will need to stop and find flowers for nectar, food to help them on their way. There are also usually some reproductive Monarchs headed our way in addition to those. They will use milkweed to lay their eggs on. That way, any of their caterpillars that survive and become butterflies will increase the numbers of Monarchs that head to Mexico to overwinter. https://monarchbutterflygarden.net/raising-monarch-butterflies-ebook/http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/03/why-are-the-monarch-butterflies-disappearing/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/monarch-butterflies-drop-migration-may-disappear/ http://www.monarchwatch.org/

Man, I have also recently ordered flag pole light on Amazon for my landscape and I am very satisfied with it! This thing has automatic daylight sensor, it fits most flagpoles from 15-25 feet with 1 minute installation. Moreover, solar flag pole light is best in brightness and batteries last long enough. I put it in front of my house so that everybody who passes over see my new purchase! And what about your flag, I would recommend you to put it on house-top, in front of a door or in front of a house because the main reason is to put it in such way that most of the people see it, otherwise why should you buy it?

@beverlyfladeziner @WestCoast Hopeful Oh my goodness, I love this porch idea SO much. It takes the porch and yard from two separate spaces to one big, friendly space. Our builder will 100% NOT do this for us, so we'd have to do it afterwards on our dime, but I love this transformative idea! We probably wouldn't lay concrete across the whole back, but maybe a smaller area with a gazebo or something. I stopped by the house this afternoon and walked around at ground level behind the house. (I haven't done this too much because we've had a lot of rain the last few months and it's super muddy.) When I was down there, I learned a few interesting things: First, the area that I thought was most usable -- directly below the porch -- is actually not the most usable. It has more of a slope than I thought. You can see it better here: It's still going to be useful, but the largest level part of the yard is in the corner where I was standing when I took this photo. Conveniently, this is also the area where the level part goes deepest towards the back of the lot, so it gives us the biggest usable level space. This slope right below the porch means that the big wide centered steps that @beverlyfladeziner suggested would have to go out significantly further to actually reach the ground. It would probably consume most of the usable space below the porch. But that's more acceptable now that I know that the corner is the prime real estate in the yard. Here's another photo that might show the slope better: The other thing I learned is that the left side of the porch is actually not as high as it looked from above. Standing on the ground, the porch is slightly above my eye level, or about 5.5' up. And since the land keeps rising to the left, stairs going along the house would only have to cover about 5' vertically. We looked at the other stairs from our same builder and estimated that they're about 40 degrees from the horizontal. So one trig calculator later, and it looks like the stairs probably won't even come to the guest room window! So I think we'll go with the left stairs for now and then look into a set of fancy wide porch steps down the line. Thanks, everybody, for all your thoughts and suggestions! I'm really happy with the left stairs for now and the awesome stairs later.