in my world.. 10 years ago ... first came acreage ... or lot size.. can't amend that.. better plan ahead ... then came a pole barn ... never have enough space for all your junk .. lol ... oh .. and then the house i would be in when it was too dark/cold to be outdoors.. included in the acreage was soil type .... and luckily for me ... the prior owners horses had a rubbing spot where i could see yellow sand ... i would have prefer a nice loam .. but that was not an option out here ... and whomever above said all soil can be amended.. never had to take a pickax to battleship gray clay to dig a hole ... what i found in the interim .. out here in the country.. is that the well and septic guys know all the soil they work in .... i found out years later ... that i live on a river of sand as they call it .... but no more than a mile away is the intolerable clay .... so either your real estate agent .. or a local septic guy from the yellow pages might help ... and finally ... the home inspector.. who also did a field check of the drain field... could push his t bar spike.. 4 feet down into the soil ... which fairly indicated to him.. it was all sand.. in other words.. you dont need to dig holes .... see link and a perk test is always requisite ... how fast water drains in the given soil ... not to mention water availability if a well is involved.. again... the well peeps can help ... again i later found out.. i was 50 feet above an unlimited underground river.. go figure on that ... and its no use to try to do some hard core gardening.. if your well is going to go dry every july ... eh??? i know this may mean nothing if you are city folk.. but it might help someone else .. looking back.. i am simply amazed what i learned when i moved from city services out into the wilderness of adrian mi .. lol .. 60 miles from suburban detroit ... good luck ken Here is a link that might be useful: sticker in-ers in the first pic

I've seen on other threads that some people have suggested to stop feeding the other birds and other little critters in the area and the hawks will move as the others move off due to lack of food. We don't feed the local wildlife, of which there is usually very little. Is there something that will just annoy the hawks into wanting to relocate? We're not, by bird standards, terribly far from the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge, 20 miles or so. And the Adirondacks are only 150 miles away. Could we gently nudge them in that direction? Another thing, one of my co-workers thought the bird still might be migrating north, that this is just a stop over on its way home. Is this likely in Upstate New York this time of year (it's still very cold, we had snow last night), or is the bird here to stay? Most of my neighbors in the eight square blocks on this side of town also have small dogs, so we are all concerned. We are in hope that the big birds in question haven't found a new home here with our pets on the menu.

I would have never put braces on my kids when they were younger than 13 years old. I was talked into it for both of them at the same time, 11 & 9 yrs old. Believe it or not! 11 yo got them off around 13 and never wore his retainer. All that money & pain was for naught, his teeth are as bad as ever (at 20 yo). 9 yo had to have them a second time, and by that time, he was still under 13 and I said NO, we'll wait. He got them done again at 14 and got them off at 16 and wears his retainer and has beautiful teeth. In addition to the retainer problems, 11 yo had to get some oral surgery to get some of his teeth to grow in so the brace work could continue properly. I can't help but think that if we'd just waited for all those teeth to grow in on their own, no matter how crooked, all of the bracework would have been done at once, properly and would have lasted. Aside from that, the only other things I would have wanted to be different were out of my control so no point crying about them now. Good discussion question!

Thanks to all who looked at the photos, and also to those who commented. MsRed Bryd, I had to check really closely to convince myself that the white and pink blooms were on the same stems. Juneroses, the wooly bee bush/brush (here are more photos) is not commonly found in nurseries even in Texas. It seems it's one of those plants still waiting to be 'discovered'. With its rough rough textured leaves and many grey branches showing it may seem to lack refinement, but I love the slightly shaggy look, plus the blooms are elegant. Incidentally, I have three sweet almond verbenas which have grown into trees. They flush many times a year and are covered with blooms right now filling the yard with fragrance. Bossy, the snapdragon vine is an annual in my garden and has never been rampant. It regularly came back from self sown seeds and its delicately beautiful twining foliage decorated a portion of the chain link fence. Then one year I did some digging in that area and I guess the seed got covered and it didn't return so I got it going again with seeds from Patty. I used to have the pink 'powder puff' and don't remember it freezing back like the red one. Unfortunately, I tried to move it at the wrong time of year and it died. I'll buy it again if I find it.