Bummer! I found loads of totem making stuff, great green glass plates for flowers, candle holders, a nifty coffee pot looking cookie jar, a set of cups and saucers with roses on them, very pretty, a glass cassarole dish, a cute little frog ceramic thingy, a hand thrown thingy that looks like a home for toads. A bolt of linen cloth for curtains for my outdoor kitchen. Books, a small metal swing, some tv trays, large plexiglass pieces about 2x3 ft. A cute frog door bell, I will be putting on the gnome home boulder. A pretty rose ceramic dish with lid that has a broken handle, and its perfect for a vine plant. A green glass vase, a glass cake plate, and I can't remember what else. My Hubbs insisted I pack them straight from the car, and their loaded on the trailor, so no pictures until I get home next weekend, thats the Bummer! part...lol Sorry guys, you have to wait, and it will seem like christmas when I get home, and unpack it all, and figure out where its going. I will take a picture, just so you can see it all. A pretty set of Murano stemware with glass fishes on the 4 piece set. Two nice glass tumblers. Oh also an iron holder, cutlery rack, the wierd thing is no big stuff, and no clothes.. unusual for me. And tomorrow is a trip to the flea market, I will probably find something big because my hubbs leaves in the morning for tennessee..lol Oh yea, I did get a cast iron stove for my yard. This will be my third, and will probably fill all three with flowers somehow..

Yeah, that last sentence above is key for me. I really want my compost to be a super booster to my soil food web, like an infusion of life that improves my soil function, not so much just for the nutrients it brings. If I just wanted N,P,K, and trace minerals, I could slap on bone meal and greensand and call it done. I want those aerobic bacteria, stable worm castings, and happy fungi so that those fertilizers are pumped out in a form my plants can actually USE. BSFL aren't a part of the general SFW, so any compost (like mine was) that's a seething mass of screaming larvmanity--oh, oh, maybe that was me screaming--is not going to be that super booster. That's just my perspective. My pile wouldn't get hot like usual, and they churned the inside to pudding. BSFL are not unhappy with near anaerobic conditions, they create an envirionment where they thrive and nothing else can. The most effective thing I did to rehab my pile was the frequent turning, I think. Adults just live 5-8 days, and lay their eggs, 900 per batch, on the dry edges. Those eggs take 4 days to hatch. If you turn the pile into a hot center about that often, in two weeks or so the current larvae leave the pile to pupate and few can hatch to take their place. I wouldn't sweat a few BSFL, even a few hundred would be good stuff still, AND a handy way for a restaurant or family of 45 to dispose of food waste and miscellaneous pig manure. :))

Here's the Facebook link with some pictures: East Alabama Food Bank Ride The picture of the waterway that leads to the gulf is especially beautiful. Is that the Pearl River? We lived in New Orleans for many years, and all those places you mentioned are familiar. Where did you live in NOLA & which high school? When my husband told me we were moving, my very first thought was that my son wouldn't get to go to Ben Franklin H.S. I'm finally over it -- 14 years later ;) Thanks for including us on your adventure. These stories are great. I shed a tear though when you wrote about calling Robert & feeling homesick. He must miss you something fierce. Best regards & blessings to you all, Caroline.

"The pocket book size does not matter when it comes to manners...if you invite someone to dinner the invitee pays." WHOA! Hold up there a sec, podnah. Do you perhaps mean that the invitER (the one who does the inviting) pays? (Which is what I was always taught when I began dating: you ask someone out, you pay or go Dutch. They ask you out, they pay or you go Dutch.) Pocketbook size DOES matter, a great deal, and it can be outright humiliating. I have lost friendships over this, where my friends were much wealthier than me and expected me to keep up with them and their lavish expenditures. (Some friends, huh?) Frankly I find it extremely rude to invite guests to events both you and they know they cannot afford to attend, and it's often embarrassing for the invitee to get these "pity invitations". IMO it is a lot classier to tailor your invitation to what your guest(s) can afford, if you are expecting them to pay their own tab. After all, having a guest is all about making your guest comfortable, isn't it? (Isn't that the message of the gazillion threads on "what makes a good guest room/bath/suite"?) If you're buying, by all means - take 'em to that joint with the $1000 gold-leaf hot fudge sundaes if that's what turns your crank! LOL