Hi, I am new here! A friend gave me an old (1975-1988) MTD-Montgomery Ward Lawn tractor, which looks a little like the old world war II tow motors used by the airports from the rear. Kinda Cute! I am restoring it and improving it. One of the mods made include old/new Bolens headlights and Peterson clearence/tail/turn/marker signals. The Briggs and Stratton 195707(8 hp) engine I am building up from a new short block. I have used a 10 to 16 amp stator and matching regulator. I understand that I may get only 10 amps out of the system because of flywheel magnets. I made sheelt metal brackets to hold the tail lights painted to tractor color. I used four Peterson clearence lamps that are sold as lawn and garden tail lights, they have 193 bulbs, 2 each lite. Each lamp uses .33 amps. I have mounted an amber unit, back to back, with a red unit on sheet metal and wired each side, one to the other. This will give me amber facing front and red to rear. This makes a total of eight lamps, a total of 2.64 amps. The Bolens headlights each use 2.1 amps, for a total of 6.84 amps. This should give me enough charging power for the battery. This tractor did not have lights when I got it. I had to make sheet metal brackets for the all the lights. I cut holes in the grile and in the bracket I made for the headlights. I had neatly cut the welds that held the hood and grile togather and purchased some hood supports on Ebay to hold the grile to the frame. Ebay has realy helped. The hood now rotates up from the grile. This little tractor is very small, less than 28 inches wide, with larger rear wheels(8 inch rims, 16-6.50x 8). With re-enforced frame, with small 3 point hitch, this tractor will be able to get through small gates, and can be carried in my small pickup. I intend to make or adapt small implements for the tractor. This is a fun project, I intend to use. Thanks for your time, Walt_2007.

Ann, this might help: Years ago, I lived in a tiny cottage behind a big house, with fields behind. We had a terrible hot spell, and a black snake (though probably not the same as a Tennessee snake) got into the cottage and took up residence between the metal shower stall and the wall (I discovered this while taking a shower, but I'll say no more about that...). My mother took to calling me on the phone and saying, "And how is Mr. Snake today?" And, of course, after she did that there could be no killing - I would see his little head poking out from his nook behind the shower, and I would be hopelessly anthropomorphic... So just try to think of them as Mr. Snake (or, of course, Mrs. Snake), and maybe you will feel more kindly towards them.

There many ways to plan a woodland garden, but here's an easy one. A lot depends on how much shade you want to create. Planting towering fast growing trees will mean fairly heavy shade in a few years and limit your future pallette to the dense shade growers, That's still a big pallette, but you want to be sure that is what you want because it is a big investment of time and money. Or do you want to do a more part shade woodland garden, with more small trees and shrubs rather than tall trees with big canopies. The next questions is how wide do you want your woodland to be? Then mark the ultimate borders of that area. Next lay out your paths, even if it will be years before all of the paths will be enclosed in the woodland. You can do this with spray paint or flour on the ground or with hoses or on graph paper. Leave a "clearing" if you want to put a seating area in. Now you have the map to begin your landscape planning. You need to decide how "wild" or how "landscaped" a look you want. In a more planned looking woodland, treat each curve of your path as a bed. If you have the space outside the canopy of dense shade created by the oaks, you may want to start with some woodland edge small trees as anchors : redbuds and dogwoods are typical. Add some lower growing shrubs around them like daphne, all spice, summer sweet, osmanthus. In front of those go the perennials. Hundreds of choices there. The nice thing is you now have a master plan and can do a "bed" at a time. If this is a bigger project plan than you have room or effort for, Just consider the oaks as the anchors of two island beds that you connect with a path. Put the tall shrubs either directly around the oaks and then fill in between the shrubs with woodland perennials. Don't forget a few spring ephemerals that will bloom before the oaks leaf out. One thing to keep in mind for a more wild look, don't repeat plants in a pattern. Do one mass and move on to another type of plant letting the edges overlap and intermix. Sorry to run off at the mouth and I'm not sure if I'm telling you stuff you already know or helping to at least focus your thoughts. I'm currently recreating a very narrow woodland edge with a fern walk punctuated with accuba shrubs and some variated solomons seal and a bunch of spring wildflowers I rescued from a builder's clearing. Even though its only 6 feet wide, I still have a curving path done in 2 1/2 foot wide stepping stones. That gave me a placement for the ferns to begin with. Specimen or frangrant plants go right at the end of a curve so a walker is going almost righttowards them.

Here's a birdcam that might help. It's on the other side of the country, but the development should be roughly the same. The Red-tailed hawk built a nest on a fire escape in downtown Portland Oregon! http://www.kgw.com/livecams/content.html?livecams_birdcams Here is a link that might be useful: RaptorCam