She was a little but I think I kind of turned her off from plants. Early on I contradicted everything she wanted to do in the yard. She always wanted to put things where they would be most asthetically pleasing and I always wanted to put things where I thought they would thrive. I want to spend all my money on plants and cutting down trees and she wants me to do crazy stuff with it, like fix the house :) I've since seen the er in my ways but recovery has been a slow process. I'm trying to get her back into it. I spend alot of time out in the yard and I would like to be able to enjoy that with her. That's a shame about Artie. I remember when I was a boy, my Grandpa ran over a massive bullfrog with his tractor. As soon as I found it I was obsessed with catching one that big. Every weekend I would spend all day crawling through the 16 inch corogated drain pipe under his driveway but they were way too quick for me. Ah, the good ole days. Thanks Lucy, I think she's pretty understanding. She just likes to give me hell. I do need to spend a little less time on here though. She has brought it to my attention that because I am a man, I am incapable of multi tasking. If my mind is elsewhere I literally cant hear her. Ladies, go easy on your men in these situations. I swear we cant even help it. Ya'll cant just start up idle conversation. You must first snap us out of our trance :) Apparently, while women are more adept to multi tasking due to evolving to clean house/ hut/ tee pee, taking care of youngins, preparing dinner, men evolved to focus extremely well on one thing, catching dinner. According to some book she read. Makes since

I would, but can't afford the vet bills! I used to hop the fence to the pasture next door and scoop up "patties" by the buckets full and put that in my compost. In fall I would pile it on the veggie garden and till it in and then pile on some more. By Spring it was awesome. I cannot hop fences anymore - sigh...and the scooping kills me. Raking too. I used to clean out people's stalls and barns...no more doing that either. The thing is, it leaches out as fast as I can pile it on. If I could lasagna all year round, it would be best, but that is almost impossible for me to do anymore. Thanks for the suggestion though. I will TRY to do that again. That is all I can do - right? Clouds still building and flying over us and no rain, at least not here. It just goes elsewhere and rains. While watching the Chris Mathews show yesterday on MSNBC I saw that it was raining like crazy outside his window. I was so envious! Tomorrow we will pull the old well pump and replace it and that will help. At least I will be able to run the water all day long without it continuously shutting off. Running up and down the stairs to the basement all day long every day to flip it back on has just worn me out. I am glad you got a little rain. Here are some pics of my peaches that I managed to get thru this heat. Water, water, water. Peaches and Gird Grapes - it took a lot of work but got some grapes too. These were grown from a cutting, the original vine was from my GG-Grandfather Gird's vines in California. It was named for him. (Girdii) I am proud to have them growing for me. Tasty little grapes. Grannie made jam with hers. I don't get enough for jam, so just enjoy them fresh. Today I am going to be canning peaches and tomatoes again. One of my big Beefsteak tomatoes. Yummy!

"...cindylou, imagine if you can what it would be like after all you and your husband have experienced with your MIL if your own children grew up and estranged you..." If I had a child who estranged me, I would not think it had anything to do or not to do with my MIL. I would not think that they owed me a relationship because I tolerated my MIL (maybe I misunderstood what you meant by connecting my MIL into that idea). If my child estranged me suddenly and with no warning and if I asked and they said, "You know", and I truly didn't, I would make the assumption they didn't quite didn't know themselves. That they have feelings and upsets they don't quite understand themselves and that they needed time away from me to work them out. (This is assuming there's no mental illness or addiction. If there is mental illness or addiction, then I do know and frankly, maybe I'm just getting too old, but I've seen the hopelessness and heartache of addiction and mental illness, and I think I'd just be grateful for being cut out). More likely, I would have been told the answer. And I'd accept it, even if it didn't make sense. "Because you wore blue to my kindergaren graduation." Huh? Ok. I don't think I'd argue. I can't imagine arguing with an adult child. They are an adult. I barely argue with them now. My parents didn't argue with me, I never saw them argue with their parents. My aunts and uncles on both sides didn't argue with either their adult children or their parents. It's just not done. I can't imagine it. There are differences of opinion and hurt feelings and misunderstandings and on rare occasions, conflict between adult members of my extended family. Of course there is. But everyone seems to understand a basic rule. I live my life and you live yours, and I can offer my opinion and it's fair if you don't follow it. The person who's business it is, gets the final say. The person who has the most responsibility gets to decide. The person who takes the biggest risk chooses. We are none of us perfect people; but we don't squabble and manipulate and gang up on each other and form one alliance and then another to force family members to do what we want. And we don't stab each other in the back. That's such a bizarre concept to me. And we are very close--without melodrama. There's not a lot of conflict. So if a child told me, "I don't want contact from you because you wouldn't let me go to Aruba on spring break." I'd respect that. I'd figure sooner or later they'd understand. Or if not, sooner or later it wouldn't matter any more. I would absolutely believe that eventually they'd come back. Not the way they were, it wouldn't be the same relationship, but had we stayed close, it wouldn't be the same relationship at 30 as it was at 20 or 10. Would I miss them and be hurt. You bet. But I'd be comforted that I would see them again and focus on the other blessings of my life while I waited. I truly believe that if you love something you let it go, and if it loves you, it will come back. And if it doesn't come back, you never had it to begin with. If after 10 or 20 years there was still no contact, I'd have to face the fact that it's probably for the best. We didn't have the relationship I thought we had; I didn't know them, and we obviously weren't a match even if they have half my DNA. Do I hope to have close, intimate relationships with the families of my adult children? Of course. But I will be happy with any non exploitive relationship my children feel comfortable with. I may want more contact or less, depending on the personalities, but perfection doesn't happen in relationships; it's like tension between togetherness and individuality that has to be worked out in a marriage. When your children are adults with families, you renegotiate your relationship, and if it REALLY doesn't work for someone, you might have to walk away. Sad, painful, but realistic. I have a coworker who is retiring and moving to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren. They are delighted to have her. On a recent house hunting trip she was dismayed that her daughter seemed to expect/demand a lot of babysitting from her. She's not moving there to take on the responsibility of babysitting her grandchildren, altho she does hope to see a lot of them and participate in their lives. Things were tense as she attempted to come to understanding with her daughter. She came back and asked if things don't work out in the other state, can she have her job back. I sometimes in the past had wondered if she's a meddling MIL so much does she talk about her grandchildren. But I see now she's got a life outside them and is not exploiting her daughter's family to fill the emptiness (if any) in her own life. And she's not going to allow herself to be exploited by her daughter however much she loves her family. She sees her standing up for herself may result in a cut off; and I respect her handling of this delicate situation. I'm sure it will all work out, but I can see myself in her place; in any relationship, there's always the possibility that you or the other person will walk away for whatever reason. You may think, oh yeah, you are so philosophical, just wait until it happens to you. Well, like anything, what choices do you have: you either accept with grace or you don't. How does not accepting with grace help anything? The ends don't justify the means. Bullying, manipulating, harassing, yelling...none of that is going to help. If you accept with grace, while you are waiting for the problem to resolve itself enough so the child talks to you again with a willingness to compromise, at least you can still have meaning and pleasure in your life. It also gives you time to reflect as well. It might not be that you did something WRONG, it's just that you don't mesh well. And you can measure in the absence how you and your adult child's family don't mesh and what you are willing to compromise to make the relationship more pleasant for EVERYONE. "Mom, you can never be unsupervised with my kids." "Why?" "Because you are a taurus". Huh? Well, that makes no sense to me. But why jeopardize my supervised visits with my grandchildren which can be wonderful by arguing if being a taurus prevents one from being a good grandma or not. Why fill that time with strife and anger and posturing and demands and righteousness and counter accusations when I can be on the floor playing Candyland and angling for the chocolate swamp or coloring in Barbie coloring books or stacking Lincoln logs as high as the sky. Who cares if DIL is glaring at me when my darling grandson and I are holding our breathes to see if we can make a Pixie Stix teepee? I believe letting them go gracefully gets them back eventually, and if it doesn't, the relationship would have just caused heartache all around anyway, estranged or not.

Have there been any changes in your household or routine lately that could explain this new behavior? Sudden changes in behavior for no apparent reason get our attention, and for good reason. It couldn't hurt to make sure the cat is healthy with a vet checkup if it's been a while. Beyond that, I never behavior I don't like. If you run out there and baby her when she does it, you're making it rewarding for her to do. If you ignore her and she's doing it for your attention she'll give up (but you may need earplugs in the meantime). If she's doing it for her own satisfaction, she'll continue until she decides she's tired of it. In that case you might try changing the routine in some way, experimenting until you figure out what works -- like maybe keeping her in your room?