The Kansas City Star, local newspaper, featured a conifer garden in their Sunday edition. The article was so interesting my wife and I decided to contact the owner to see if we could visit the garden. The owner was Marvin Snyder a past president of the ACS. The garden in a residential setting is a product of 40 plus years of incorporating natural limestone rock, over 300 rare conifers and many deciduous companion plants. These three main ingredients make this conifer garden truly unique. There are also sculptures and fountains. That's how I got hooked...it took about an hour. My wife and I embarked on a new journey...create our own conifer garden. This was about ten years ago. We then purchased our first conifer a Howell's Tigertail. It is still with us today. This addiction comes on slowly almost unnoticed until those sudden impulses to visit the local nursery almost daily to look at the various plants. Studying each label to determine if your garden has a spot for the selected plant. Currently, we enjoy each season of the garden. We now anxiously await spring to incorporate new thoughts and ideas that have accumulated over the winter months. Dave

The music you buy from Rhapsody does not disappear. You can burn it to CD, and copy and play it any where you want. Of course the music you rented on "Rhapsody To Go" will disappear when you quit the service. In fact you have to sign onto Rhapsody with you player connected to your computer at least once a month or the "music to go" will stop playing until you connect, and than it will play again. . This is no problem to me. Much of the music I listen to I would not want to own, but how do I know unless I got a chance to listen to it and live with for a while. If you are into any kind of music other than whatÂs played over, and over on the radio you might enjoy being able to carry around a virtual record super market such as Rhapsody to go. As a fan of Jazz I have purchased many albums over the years based solely on liner notes, and jacket art, and considering the number of used records and CDÂs for sale, IÂm guessing IÂm not the only one. I have no problem with dumping stuff I canÂt get into, and paying for what I like, fill my player up and start over again. I have purchased more music in the last few months than I have in the past year thanks to Rhapsody to go. Napster was the first to offer this kind of subscription service, and I think Yahoo does also. I just picked one, and it works for me.

WELLLLLL>>>>> as my baby Texan Brother would say.... welll bust my britches !!!! that is a sight for sore eyes !!!! it is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo amazing... I've very seldom been speechless... but you take the cake!!! What in the world have you done to me....now you've gone and done it.......... You've made me crazy with desire !!!!!! Yes , it's true... i"ve been bitten by the bug... the gluing, grouting, glass, marble what ever... B U G !!! all from reading this post !!!! I don't know whether to SHOUT ~ Sing ~ clap my hands ~~~ jump up and down ~~~~ or W H A T !!!! It was an amazing T R I P for me just reading and L O '~' O K I N G at these pictures !!!! THANK YA __ T H A N K YA ===== T H A N K YA !!!!!!!! God Bless You and your tallent and Fantastic Work !!! Thank you for sharing and thank you for inspiring me... that I can at least do S O MN/THN !!!!! ***** H A P P Y * * * * HOLIDAYS !!! M E R R Y + C H R I S T M A S !!!!!! God Bless! susiesunshine PS I AM A TEXAN TOOOOOOO!!!!! hope I drank the same water as you..... born in Odessa, Tx lived in FRISCO, TX - before I moved to Rockford, IL !!! (now I'm Freezing!!!) but perhaps I can WARM up if I learn to follow in your footsteps!!!!

A&AE, I have been following this discussion with great interest, because I am going to be decorating with some pieces in the future that are "Japonisme," which is Chinoiserie's cousin, lol! My mom lived in Japan for a year back in the mid 50's and brought back a ton of stuff. Some of it was made more for European tastes. Also, she lived in SF for three years after that and bought a lot of Japanese influenced things to go with what she brought back. I have inherited it all now. So I tend to love Asian influenced things but also I have a style that can be described as "sentimental" or as I call it, "cozy granny" because most of the stuff I like hasn't been in style since granny's day or even great great grandma. I've always liked antiques, but at my age, things that are considered antiques today are the MCM stuff I grew up with. When I was a kid back then, that was NOT the definition of antique! I like stuff from the late 1800's through Art Deco. I like Victorian, but couldn't live with most of it. Arts and crafts is one of my favorite styles and that definitely had an Asian influence. I don't know if Chinoiserie has ever been extremely popular, but right now I am up against a couple of trends which I think are also influencing how a younger generation might view Chinoiserie. One is gender, because my SO for whatever reason, is very strongly against floral things. My dad didn't like floral things all that much either, but he often just acquiesced to my mom and that was fairly typical I think of male/female relationships in the last century and maybe even the one before that. The home was the typical purvey of the "woman of the house" and Chinoiserie was popular with them. I think there is a great deal of sexism in considering certain colors and motif's "feminine" but it's out there and prevalent so there you go. My SO certainly suffers from that cultural conditioning. So now that men are taking a more active role in home-making (at least some men, my SO included) and marital relations are looked at more as a partnership, there's a lot more influence of taste that might be considered "masculine" in the home, from color palettes to art and furniture styles, like the "industrial" trend. Not to say that men don't like florals and women don't like gears, but I know in my decorating dilemmas, it is often gears vs flowers and we tend to compromise on styles and designs that are less extreme--abstracts, geometric stuff, etc. I'm not sure what will bring about a revival of the taste for Chinoiserie or even Victorian or antique anything. Folks are more transient nowdays and aren't as inclined to devote themselves to a set aesthetic in their homes. They want a flexible look. So I think individual pieces of Chinoiserie will always be popular, like art, dishes, fabrics and accent furniture. I think the total look will remain popular with only a few folks who can afford it. Because of the transience, I am afraid the days of those gorgeous Chinoiserie influence wallpapers are gone forever, at least in big common spaces in homes. While I love the look, even I myself would not go for it, because I would want to be able to more easily change out the look of a room from season to season or year to year. But I have little vignettes of Japonisme all around my current home. When I have some time, I may post some of them. Here's a quickie, just something I totally threw together. The framed pictures are very old calendar pics that my mom had from back in the 50's in SF. They are just there right now to fill up the space and hide the very ugly white back of the shelving units. They will go on the wall eventually, and my mom's collection of Japanese dolls will go in the unit when I get it properly set up and the glass doors installed.