Beautiful shots, Lisa! Have you seen that RSP lately? Do you have cherry or willow in your yard? I'm trying to attract them with Wild Cherry and Willow both, but haven't been lucky enough to see any yet. Nor a Viceroy! Susan

Don't know what "Docusate" is, marcolo, but does it help with a tooth ache? What can i say but that your grumpiness is rubbing off on me. :-) Still, I stand behind my sentiment including my frustration with the posts on GW both from nervous would-be owners and the peanut gallery that seems to encourage the mindless pursuit of some imaginary definition of perfection. This from people who - based on the collective set of their sentiments, statements and photographic documentation don't see that their own endeavours in their activities fall far short of achieving "perfection" - and understandably. The end result with the goading is more in line with bullying than holding a standard. That recognition to me came in a post that I saw from someone here many many years ago. Poster and her husband were doing a large remodel or a rebuild. It was a complex project as they had to attend to myriad issues, surprises and unexpected plan changes, so she said that they just asked the soapstone fabricators to do their best for them with the best slab they could give them as they couldn't add attending to slab selection and counter layout for fab to their plate. They said they preferred a movement-y soapstone of whatever variety and then left it at that. Well came counter installation day and they were nervous as they were going to be surprised. Well, you can guess what the average GWian reaction would be, right? Horror at the selection. Horror at the portion of the slab used. "I would have wanted this piece over here and that piece over there". "This horrible patch of pale gold in a stream of cream should have been cut around ... ". "I've been gypped ..." Not so. This couple said that they were excited but nervous about what they'd get. She said - and I'll never forget this - "we were left speechless. It was even more beautiful than we'd ever imagined." She loved the slab selection; she loved the counter layout the fab picked from the slab; she loved how it appeared in her kitchen ... If you looked at the stone in her kitchen - it had a thick band of white in a dark soapstone and it was easily what the populace here would be doing a collective double over and regurgitate yesterday's dinner over. I was moved reading her post because it was as much a commentary about the beauty in the vagaries in the much vaunted natural materials as it was an instruction in the how the right set of eyes and mind can appreciate said material. That it is done in the whole and not in scrutinizing the minutiae. Now, I'm not that easy-going to be sure and I have had no end of opinions about how wood or stone grain should zig vs. zag (minimally), how trees should grow their branches (symmetrically), how rose bushes should arch etc. But this lady issued the best instruction by personal example about how to appreciate nature. It governed my own ideas about regulating the tightness in the reins on my counter selection - at the time I was trying to figure out if I wanted a particular engg quartz or a black granite ctrtop. I decided that if I was going to go for the granite (that I'd convey to the fabricator what I generally wanted) and then let go and really prepare to be pleasantly surprised. It isn't to say that if you say "I like natural stuff" that you don't get to have an opinion about whether you get a carrera or a statuary or a black granite or a blue quartzite in your home. Really it is more about the fact that once you've realized the key characteristics about what you like, if you need something that zigs exactly the way you see it in your mind's eye and zags just the way you see it, then you are not looking at the right material. The best posts to my mind are the ones who delight in the surprises in their natural materials and the ones who delight in the perfect symmetry and perfect matches achieved in their engineered materials. Anything else makes me feel sad as I feel the poster made the wrong material selection. Madeline, this isn't to say anything to you other than that you might honestly prefer a different class of material - maybe it a man-made but maybe it is a different marble, as others have said. Calacatta with thick veins is more the norm in what I've seen than not.

It's fun to see the pictures and see the coons and cats eating together but I never met a coon that I really liked. They are mean and vicious when they want to be and will kill for the sport of it. I have had them raid my chicken house and just cause a melee leaving a wake of dead chickens..night after night...It is very heart breaking to have to endure their viciousness.......once they find your place, they will come until you kill them or there is nothing left for them to kill or eat..they will eat a bit and then go chase another. I have found that they can get into just about anything that a human being can build. I had a Mama duck that decided to build a nest and set on her eggs. When I found her, I tried to secure her as best I could and managed for nearly the whole period of time but before the hatch, they got to her...killed her and tromped through destroying most of the eggs....You can stand there watching them and they will shoot a bird at you they are so reckless...shoot at them and in 5 minutes they will come back and say, let's try that again...........

Great photo! I really do believe that traits like creativity and artistic ability are genetic. Also, personality traits. My first wife, Mary, and present wife, Sue (or Bigbaby) as she's known here have, have totally different personalites. My son, Ryan, was 8 when Mary died. Yet, 90% of his personality is so much like Marys. It's downright eerie at times. Ron