~ * W * E * L * C * O * M * E ~ Mowermaid ! ! ! Thanks for sharing your ideas... and thanks for chiming in.... You are a lovey addition to the group ! ! ! and as you can read here.... there are many many lovely talented people here willing to share IDEAS ~ Thoughts ~ Instructions ~ Hopes & Dreams & Lots & L O T S ~ of Love & ENCOURAGEMENTS ! ! ! Again ~ W * E * L * C * O * M * E ! ! ! God Bless ! SusieSunshine PS I'm a Texan 2 ~ just doing so Missionary Work Up here in the Frozen KLONDIKE ! ! ! Gotta get back to my ~ T E X A S ~ ASAP !!!

Dorothy, We have huge timber rattlers like that here on our property and they scare me to death. Once somebody ran over one and killed it in the road right by our mailbox. All day long people stopped to look at the huge size of that sucker, and you could even hear them hollering comments (I was in the garden 100' away from the road) like "Dang! That's a big snake!" Finally someone stopped and picked it up. They asked if I minded if they took it. Ha! I was tired of looking at it and was glad to see it go. Last year we came back from a fire on a 110 or 112 degree day when not a creature was stirring in the head and found a big timber rattler lying in the driveway. I guess it was sunning itself, and I said to Tim "Is it not hot enough for that thing without the reflected heat from the driveway?" Due to its proximity to the house, he was going to shoot it but by the time we parked and were out of the car it had disappeared. We have an unpleasant encounter with a big timber rattler the size of the one you described at least twice a year, and sometimes 4 or 5 times a year. There is a dense woodland between our house and the nearest house to our south, and the timber rattlers always seem to come out of that area. Although we have western diamondback rattlers and copperheads in the garden fairly often, I've never seen a timber rattler there and I think it is because the holes in the fence are too small for them to squeeze through. And, for whatever reason, I most often encounter pygmy rattlers in one specific area of the woodland and rarely see them any place else. I have a long list in my brain of areas coded "do not enter" in summertime because of frequent snake encounters in those areas. The farther west you go from our house and towards the river, the heavier the snake population. The far back part of the property near the western fence line is so full of copperheads that I do not go back there for any reason whatsoever during snake season. Our next-door neighbor was bitten on or near her ankle by a copperhead a few years ago. She got immediate medical attention but had a lot of trouble with her leg for quite some time. She couldn't walk and had to be in a wheelchair for maybe a month. It does seem like the swelling lasted a long time. I know that snakes are an important part of the ecosystem and we'd be overrun with rodents were it not for the snakes, but I hate it when they are lurking in the yard or garden. We try to keep the area up around the house, garage, and gardens snake-free, but ignore the ones that roam the rest of our acreage. We have 14.4 acres and we don't shoot snakes on roughly 13 of those acres. However, despite the fact that they control rodents and are very helpful in that regard, I still don't like them and never will. Dawn

I'll never forget my little run in with a snake. I went downstairs to do some laundry and found a garter snake on the floor. It totally creeped me out. I just hate snakes. Especially when you see them where you shouldn't. It was mid January in MN! We ended up with a few in the basement that winter. They were coming in through cracks in the foundation/cement block wall. My husband made up a little noose on a pole(kind of like what the dogcatcher would use to grab an animal. Of course, while he was out of town I found another snake. I had to force myself to use the pole and nab the snake. But I was so freaked out that instead of just tossing the snake out the basement window, I let the entire contraption fly. Good thing I didn't need to use the pole again because I wasn't going anywhere near that snake again-even if it was now a snake popsicle! That spring my husband made sure he sealed even the tiniest cracks in the foundation and that seems to have done the trick. Thank goodness.

I have a jade plant! I'm not very familiar with propagating it (currently attempting it but it has yet to root), but I can send multiple to trade for your string of pearl.