LOL, I love how you told what Blaze was thinking. BeeBee hates his feet wet even and looks at me like 'well, can't you DO something about this?' I hope you dried out all cozy at home after the ordeal. I'm so sorry about the rain in OK. I wish yours would come to us in the southeast who are in drought! We did have a sudden thunderstorm the other day that kicked up when I was checking out shopping. I pulled my car up really close to the store to try not to get so wet. The manager came and yelled at me for blocking the handicapped ramp [believe me nobody was gonna wheel up right then in that downpour]. He didn't have any employees who were out there already [playing ball] help me load... just kept asking when I could move it. Umbrellas all around!

Hi By cloud forest do you mean those eternally cool places with extreme humidity.? Check the average temps at Monte Verde . If you attempt this be sure to put in your own power plant lol. Or maybe you live on a mountain top.?? Now if your talking lowland rainforest that's attainable. Since I live in S Florida it is almost easy . One gigantic problem . My "rainforest " quickly becomes a "jungle" lol I only started integrating my shadehouse in 2000, before that it was mostly used for hanging baskets. Put in a 8x10 seep wall last March and my ultimate goal is to use no pots at all.. I seriously don't think this will be attainable in 12x25 but eventually it will expand to 25 square.. I'm not allowed to have the roof above 9 feet which is not nearly enough room. I really don't care if it's a "replica" of a rainforest just so it works well and each segment compliments the others. I'm an epiphyte freak and to me this is what "rainforest means. It will never be a "Cloud forest" due to the heat nor will it ever be a representation of a lowland RF with specific species. But the fantastic "growth on growth" one sees in these forests is achieveable. None of the problems have so far been insurmountable. Requires very careful selection of species with such limited space. I'm going to start adding birds during spring. Very carefully selected species lol. gary

got it :-) Lucy

I'm too lazy to check if I said this before, but when we moved to this small town we had a lot of friends and stayed that way until our children grew up. Most kids here go to college and move back to raise their family. One of mine did too. Except we have no extended family here while our old friends have all sorts of family. And that's who they now get together with for holidays & other gatherings. No outsiders included, period. To make matters worse, DS built a house close to us, his wife was and still is like a daughter to me, her parents and siblings became my family since I have no one on my side in the state. Best in-laws a person could ask for. Both families went to DS and wife's house every holiday. And then DS divorced her, and holidays aren't the same anymore. He has a fiancée now but I don't know her very well, so it's kind of lonely with no women to be with this time of the year. His fiancée is kind of standoffish so I have to give it time. I should have expected it would be this way when my kids were little and their friends had birthday parties with only family, which included lots of cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents. That was hard to explain to my kids, why they weren't invited. When the kids were around 11 I did get a new BFF who moved here from out of state. They moved away a few years later for the reasons listed above. lol There's nowhere to volunteer, nothing. Strangest place I've ever lived, but I hear it happens in other small rural towns. At least we're relatively close to a large city for entertainment.