My business name is "Fowl Places". I use all my found "junk" to make homes for our cavity nesting feathered friends. You'll find me online quickly by doing a search for my business name or for "unique birdhouses". I'd best not include the link here myself due to GardenWeb's advertising rules and regs. The only thing new I use are screws. All other materials I find myself or at flea markets, eBay, 2nd hand/antique stores. Most of my wood comes from barns I've torn down or from old fences. All wood colors are the way I find it - I do not use paints or stains. The coolest metal I use comes from an old aqueduct system in the Tonasket, WA area - a Fe/Cu alloy that weathers in the neatest patterns/colors. For cleaning I use a hose and a horse brush!

Somebody else's. Actually, two somebody else's. Full time in a land planning office (Falmouth) that can find me doing a lot more civil engineering than landscape design. A lot of the landscape design is conservation revegetation or mitigation. Some of it is ornamental. Some of it is getting people out of jams from their illegal alteration of wetland buffers (usually cutting trees or shrubs for a view). It is a small office where we all do everything and each of the licensed people check the work of the others, but might work on the entire project without anyone else drawing on it. Some projects are condominium developments, affordable housing, banks, police stations, fire stations, and a lot of big homes, many of which include the razing of the old one (add in the conservation issues on waterfront houses). The closer to the ocean, the more the land is worth, the more the owner feels the house has to justify the lot, the more wetland resources,.... On Saturdays I do plans for a high end landscaper (Orleans)at the othe end of the Cape. That is lots of stonework, custom pools, large homes, lots of plants, and not a lot of budgetary woes. And the engineers already have the work limits permitted (usually). The limiting factor is that I have to work within the style of the company, but it is very much in context with the market it is in. Wetlands regulations in my area are growing a cottage industry that moves a lot of money. Landscaping is a diverse field as I always say. But you may be surprised how diverse the landscape design field is as well. It has been an interesting past five years when my career path had a detour when I found myself in a civil engineer's office. I had no idea I'd do what I do. Coming up with strategies to satify the regulations and help the client get what he wants is interesting. I never knew that psychology was actually going to be relevent when it was a requirement in landscape architecture. My task resume is pretty broad (and everyone likes a pretty broad, irrisistable joke, sorry).

aCs = ancient Chinese secret :-) i work with a couple of different software programs that were developed for me by my neice ... they're not available in the retail market (yet!) ... she still has a lot of kinks to work out ... i've been pleased , overall , but , as has been pointed out , the exterior applications do not offer the proper look i am seeking ... so we're working on that ... excepting library items , most of the drawings require hand-placement of each detail ... a bit time-consuming , but i am able to draft with much more speed than i ever could using CA ... thank you to all who left kind words ... it has been a pleasure to offer my assitance , and i look forward to futher requests ... my apologies to those who were hoping to procure these drafting tools , but , hopefully , my neice will be publishing in the not-too-distant future ...

AVG is good but hogged resources big time on my machine, slowed it to a crawl. Avira (free for Windows) is very good, much less a resource hog. For a free firewall I love Comodo (not the suite, just the firewall). Does a bang up job for a freebie. Even warns me of suspicious sites and if it's for sure not good (such as a google search result I click on) will warn me to stop and not enter the site. I use Malwarbytes for scanning for spyware, malware, etc. and SpywareBlaster for stopping the junk from ever landing on my PC via browsers. If SpywareBlaster is kept regularly updated, very little lands on my machine other than the odd tracking cookie.