Beautiful! Thanks for sharing. I'm watching the buds on my rose plants grow and I can't wait until they bloom. Your post helps ease the wait. Here is a link that might be useful: Rock and Roll

I agree with the above. Plus the fact that too much personal information gets divulged or can be mined by joining facebook. I'd rather limit my online participation to forums like GW and other, less inclusive, less wide open sites. I've been a member here for a long time....going on a couple of decades......and I have seen the same ebb and flow of visitor traffic through the seasons as we are now witnessing. January, February, March are always as slow as molasses but it will pick up when the gardening season comes into to full force in the next 6-8 weeks. And I have to say that the comments about excessive ads and pop-ups surprises me. I don't experience hardly any at all and just use Explorer with the standard firewalls. Didn't realize this was much of a problem anymore regardless of the Internet server one used...... I have to be honest when I say I read more than post. Most of the topics don't hold a great deal of interest for me and I tend only to respond to questions that get neglected or overlooked or when erroneous info is provided. Since conifers are not my area of concentrated expertise, I let others respond first - there is an amazing knowledge base here :-) But I still remain pretty active in some other forums. I also live in an area where the Internet is not widely available so I am not online at home. And since my work life is pretty seasonal and therefore computer access the same, I tend not to post much in winter anyway.

Shortly after my wife decided that she preferred to live on her own, I went to board (for 4 years) with an old lady in her 80s who'd been known to our family for years ... Dad was pallbearer at her aunt's funeral (that she'd cared for while bedridden) on the day that psych. hosp. called to say that Mom died and I, age 13, went to tell him. Bessie, never married (fiance soldier killed in W W I) had been a pediatric nurse, was a lovely spirit and in good health in her 80's. I don't think that I ever heard her say anything sharp or nasty about anyone. Everyone in the village loved her ... but they tended to head for the hills when they saw her little blue Falcon coming down the street. I thank her sweet spirit for heading off my feelings of bitterness against females at the time. She spent several years in a retirement-nursing home, couldn't see or hear well near the end of life, but had she lived another 4 months would have achieved 105. She was missed by many. And, I hope, quite a number may have chosen to alter some of the things in their lives for the better as a result of seeing her, a quiet Christian, in action. I am thankful for Bessie's ministry in my life. ole joyful

I built a huge koi pond at the house across the street. Rumour has it that house came in around $40mil. That guy is going to look like the poor cousin now, I guess. These guys tend to be #3's, referring to my earlier post. The money can be good but as Racket suggested, they expect a disproportionate amount of your time (meaning my time as the company face) when you have 15 or 20 other jobs going on. The value of our dollar may be nearly the same, but even with the strength of our dollar material and equipment prices haven't fallen much so I guess a pool here costs even more that a couple of years ago.