Would like to trade for plants suited to a partially shaded pond. Thanks!

Hi Ci. I thank you for the link. It is quite an interesting thing, haven't thought to link the pots to a gravity feed water tank. It would have helped a lot today with the watering. So many things seem to have dry pots today, and I was busy all day long. We need a good soaking rain, about 2 inches would work nicely for starters. :)

It is indeed a long term commitment, Nancy. One of the benefits of participating in parrot-owner groups is finding someone who can take your animals should life conditions change. Sometimes it is not death, but economics which force a rehoming of a parrot.....like large noisy macaws especially are rehomed when folks in recent years lost their homes and moved in with family or into apartments etc which did not accept such noisy pets. Of course, once night comes, parrots are quiet and asleep, but still, a macaw is a wood-eating machine and to consider what is fair to the bird is also important. They need space, and time out of the confinement. So, having someone who can permanently or temporarily care for the birds is a big issue for parrot owners. And as you say, they can life as long a life as human beings. I discovered parrots late in life, maybe when I was 45, and so any young birds I take will outlive me, given a normal longevity. My adored African greys are just now sexually mature, around 15 for one, and my big boy Kimali turned 14 on March 18.....I had him from the time he was 5 weeks old, fell in love with the little dinosaur when he was hatched only 3 days. So he's known me all his life. We have a special relationship. One of the major concerns with most people is the long term care of the parrots after we pass on. So, the parrots are in my will. I am a fan and supporter of Iowa Parrot Rescue near Muscatine Iowa, and have taken several parrots to them for my vet when folks cannot keep them. IPR is a 401c3 or whatever it is, tax deductible etc, and it is a great place out in the middle of huge expanses of corn fields, with an outdoor aviary, and a large permanent care facility along with an active adoption program. Parrots coming from a home frequently need a new family to love, and prefer to be touched and handled. Yet others have been so badly abused for whatever reasons, that they are custodial candidates. Mike and Abi evaluate potential homes before and after an adoption, and I trust their judgement with this. I have a bequest to the IPR in my will, and definitely support them during the present time. In most cases, family members are not inclined to share legacies with a bird, and in my mind it is not an optional commitment. Before everything else, my animals, dogs as well as birds, are to be provided for. My external hard drive with 10 years worth of photos on it failed, and it also contained the backups for the whole computer. So, now I must send it off to be salvaged if possible. All I have left are albums on Flickr. I might have a couple of pictures accessible but what a sad thing. I took 10 gig of photos of just my hosta garden last year, so those are gone too. Real bummer. Dolly and Dixie. Dolly is the puppy. Keno, a male eclectus parrot adopted when his mama died of esophageal cancer Kimali male African grey in the dining room Rumbles, a tiny female African grey adopted last May when her mama was diagnosed with brain tumor and lung cancer

Well, Don, I guess thank you? hehehehe Like olives, I had to acquire a taste for serpents. Or snakes. I mean, they were everywhere down in Louisiana AND south Texas where I worked. We had to watch out everywhere we tied up the boat, especially if under trees overhanging the bayou banks. I'll never forget the day I observed a tug boat crew with 4x4 long timbers stepping lively and beating the dickens out of something I could not see. It turned out to be a big rattler that was trying to go down an air vent into a compartment below. Cottonmouth moccasins open up and reveal how they got their name....totally white like a boll of cotton.....and the moccasin just as soon chase you as leave you alone. Not a peaceable critter at all. Do you remember the movie/book by Larry McMurtry LONESOME DOVE? The young cowboy falls off his horse in the stream, and by the time they get him out of the water he is already past saving? Yep, moccasins. Even the baby ones have enough venom to kill a man....or so I was told. And years ago, a young man (I knew his family) was water skiing on the river in springtime. He fell off and the same sort of thing happened to him as in McMurtry's book. But in naming my home MoccasinLanding, it was more the fear factor I called into play. There is a certain uneasy feeling comes upon one who anticipates encountering such an aggressive critter. And that kept people away from my uninhabited home for almost 20 years. That and the 6 foot long flattened snake I mounted on a board and hung from a tree by my dock. hehehehe. It was Louisiana roadkill flattened by an 18 wheeler. I made no claim that the snake was from MY yard! I live peaceably with snakes here, they are part of the ecosystem. At our river property, I see them regularly, not sure they are venomous or not. Not a problem, I simply watch where I step and make some noise and stay out of the muck. They like fish and frogs for dinner.