I was thinking about a few names, Archie, Gilbert or Hector, but now you've added more names to the list! So which two should it be? Archie, Gilbert, Hector, Oscar or Felix? Do you know anything about Cayuga Ducks? I was thinking those may be a good fit for me considering they are suppose to be the quietest of the ducks, besides the Muscives (don't think that's spelled right). I really like thier coloring and think they might be the cutest things with two wings. I have done a lot of reserch, but it always helps to get advice from real owners! Thanks to you all in advanced!

The double knockouts are really pretty roses. I have eight of the double red ones. Just that they need headheading if the blooms get goopey. Not unusual for the old blooms to get goopy. On the singles you don't have that problem. As far as old garden roses, first off many are once blooming. I need lots of bloom from my roses, not just a one a year thing. Otherwise I just feel there are so many better looking roses available these days that are such improvements over old garden roses. I do realise lots of people love them. To each his own. I would much rather have an old fashioned form in a modern lookalike.

So guess what? I've now been to Ann Arbor for the first time in my life! Loved the town! Had some fabulous food there, and just found the entire Main. St. area to be very authentic, very lively on a summer Wed. afternoon, fabulous farmers market going on till 2, just perfect. After traipsing around Main St. for a bit, we drove to the Chain of Lakes area which was just about the perfect distance away, 30 minutes or so from the Main St., and an easy drive. As we drove on, I fell more and more in love with the landscape, which got more and more rural and beautiful as we approached the lake area. We first went to Portage Lake, and then to Baseline Lake. My first glimpse of Portage was perfect. Really liked the size, the setting, everything. It's a little difficult to GPS your way around a lake because I didn't have a specific address, just wanted to explore. The main part we saw had houses much too close together for my liking, though I loved many of the styles of homes. Similar feeling about Baseline. The overall problem was that my mom and sister are not good explorers. They are real homebodies, and don't get out to explore much on their own, so they were completely panicked about finding our way back, driving willy-nilly down roads that suddenly popped up etc. Once I realized I just wasn't going to be able to explore the way DH and I would, I just gave up on truly exploring the area. I did sneak down to the water's edge by trespassing at a house that looked somewhat vacated. The water seemed fairly clear, but there was definitely some algae at the shore. Not sure if that is a once every ten years kind of issue, or ongoing. At least I got to see the area, and assuming we could find a somewhat private waterfront home, it would definitely be in the running. On the other hand, 2 1/2 hours drive time from my sister's home to a lakehouse might prove to be too much adventure for mom and sis.... We're still hoping to get to Sleeping Bear at the end of Sept. so we'll have something to compare to. Thank you all so much for your help getting me there!

Well, here's my crazy idea ... In one of the houses I'm looking at buying, the carpets are NASTY and I refuse to replace them with more carpet. Hardwood is out of my budget since I do have to replace the central a/c and a retaining wall near the patio right away. I'm hoping there's hardwood under the carpet, but I really doubt it. I will know next week when I go through with the realtor (for now, I'm basing everything on several exterior inspections (it's vacant and every window is bare and wide open, there's not much besides the basement & what's under the carpet that I can't see). A friend is a carpet/vinyl installer and he's offered to put down new underlayment throughout and sand it smooth so it'll be like one big piece, suitable for whatever I want to do down the road. I'm thinking in the interim, since it's a cottage style anyway, I may just enamel the floors and do a stencil or something, along with area rugs. I thought something like this, done on the floor in two very close colors (medium neutral tone), might look nice. It would be more interesting that simply painting it a flat color, but not so much that it would take away from the decor. It would also hide dust/dirt/lint more than a flat single color. I could just sponge paint it, or even use a wall stencil, but we're talking an entire (small cottage) style house ... that's a lot of knee time. Suggestions?