And a good Saturday morning to all! ESH, I probably know more about oaks now than ever. Thanks! I enjoy these old loggers and farmers identifing(?) what they need for a specify job. Example: a good friend that use to pulpwood and farms now also builds ponds and such in the off months, needed to replace the ramps on his low-boy on which he hauls equiptment. He cut down a Post Oak, had it sawed and fitted. The scaps I built a table for girl when she was in college. (CPA in Atlanta now... toot toot) Think she still has the furniture I built for her while she was in college. Oh yeah, the boy (30's) finally bought his own place in Smyrna. A townhouse I believe... built him a coffee table and end table when he graduated from college. Thank God they are all through! Can't believe the son would rather play video games than drive... I remember growing up and helping my bro-in-law plant... would gladly keep his fertilizer distributers full just so I could move the truck up a few feet at the time. LoL... times have changed. Michelle, thanks a lot about the kind words. I am not a big animal lover, but I don't like to see anything abused... people or animals. We got him when he as just a little ball of fur and the wife would go off to work and the girls off to school, so it was just him and me here. Guess after all these years I really got attached to him. Never found anyone so dedicated as him without asking anything in return. The leaves are starting to fall here. I remember the little ole ladies raking up their leaves and burning them. Now my wife gets on her ZTR mower and cuts them in for fertilizer. Two fold gain... it helps the ground and gives my wife a chance to get on her mower after the grass has stopped growing. Here is a photo (blame ESH for teaching me how to do this) of the table I made from the Post Oak scraps. Hope all have a great weekend. Shot

I didn't have a house I could garden at until my son was 2 1/2 (hes 4 1/2 now). He loves helping me out. He's always been a really observant child, and I show him what plants are weeds and what aren't, and he helps me pull them...the right ones too. When I'm planting new plants and flowers, he has his own tool set, even a kneeling pad, and I show him where I need a hole and he digs it for me. He also has this John Deere powerwheels dump truck thing, and he likes hauling stuff around the yard for me. I have a big pile of rocks, and we go get loads of them in his truck and my wheel barrow when I'm setting up a new flowerbed, or a load of mulch or compost to use wherever we need it, or I put the trash weeds and rocks I find when I'm clenaing up a spot into his truck and we take them to where they need to go. I'm starting a vegetable garden next year, and he's really looking forward to that. I'm sure he'll really get a kick out of the tomato hornworms, since he likes picking bugs where I'm working too. He keeps the snails and pillbugs for whatever reason and puts the worms we find back into the flowers or in the compost pile if we find some elsewhere. He has a pet toad now, so he gives it the bugs he finds now. Just today we were picking leaf-rolling caterpillars off my cannas and feeding them to the toad. I would suggest really not worrying about trying to include your kids in REAL gardening work until they are 3 or so...then they have a better understanding of whats going on. ANy younger than that and they're just going to keep pulling up what you just planted. I'm going to have a hard time with that once my 2-month-old is outside with us when he's older. Maybe just set up a "pretend" garden area for them. This would be easy for me since I use raised-bed gardening, I can just make an extra section. They could even plant the seeds from watermelon you buy at the store (or if you grew one and ate it)...I'm always finding watermelon and cantaloupe vines popping up in my flwoerbeds from seeds that got into the compost pile. They sprout really fast, but I doubt they will make anything. Potatoes too. Cut up a potato and have them plant it. It will make a big plant. And I disagree with WPalm033 about the cactus. A lot of cactus spines are difficult and painful to remove, especially from a screaming squirming child ("NOOOOOOOO!") I've had my share of splinter-removal ordeals. Plus some kinds of cacti have a poison or something in their spines and hurt for a long time afterward. ALso many cactus spines "disappear" against the color of your skin. Most of the prickly pear we have around here look like they dont have spines at all, just little fuzzy bumps, but they are really tiny spines and are really hard to get out. The ones with the great big long spines also have those tiny ones at the base. A safer alternative to actual cactus would be aloe vera. They are spiny, but dont have the needles like cacti that will get stuck in your skin. Plus you can use their gel for burns. You cant teach a child that way anyway...that by touching the cactus he wont touch any other plants. Then he just wont touch the cactus again.

Believe it or not, I thought I was going to have to take my mom to emergency AGAIN! The last two weeks have been pretty hectic for me. Our first grandchild was born and she had serious breathing difficulties. She improved quickly, but, in the meantime, I didn't go visit my mother as often as usual. And last week we took a two day trip to see the baby. When I finally saw my mother yesterday, I discovered that she had not had a bowel movement for ten days. TEN DAYS!! She never said anything to me before we left and she wouldn't have said anything if I hadn't noticed her "poop" calendar. All I could think of was, "Oh, great! Another trip to the emergency room!" I wanted to avoid that at almost any cost; it would be too embarrassing. So I took her to the drugstore to buy an enema bag. At her assisted living apartment, I put it together (I ended up with two blisters from connecting the ribbed plastic tubing to all the parts.) I told her to add Milk of Magnesia to her daily routine and take the Dulcolax every night instead of twice a week. Then I left and crossed my fingers. I just called her and the enema worked. Thank goodness! I dreaded taking her to the doctor again over her constipation. Even though I've got signs up in her apartment and lecture her every time I see her, I now know that she absolutely cannot be trusted to drink anywhere near the amount of water she should be consuming. So I will now have to buy her four gallons of bottled water each week. I'm going to mark them so she'll know she has to consume at least half of the gallon each day. I'm also going to give her one of our giant, oversized tumblers and tell her she need to drink three glassfuls each day. She's already taking four Metamucil tablets and three stool softeners each day. And every Monday & Thursday she takes Dulcolax. She really shouldn't be having a problem, but I know that the missing key is the water intake. As you can tell, this situation frustrates me. She has other problems -- wet macular degeneration & severe osteoarthritis in her knees. The doctors haven't been able to help either of those problems, But at least she can do something to ease her constipation! Thanks for listening, Sue

if u don't want to go the book route, how about a savings bond?? u pay $25 and in 15-20 (i forget which) years its worth $50., i know its doesn't sound like a lot but we did that for our kids since birth. for my oldest it paid half of her college bill in junior year. had the whole family on board and everyone did it when they were too little realize they really didn't "get" anything.. everyone always got them a little something to go with it, so when they we knew they should get presents, they had something to open.. the amounts go as high as $500 i think. did it for every occasion, it really adds up!!! $500 bond, $1,000 in allotted time plus interest if u hold onto them past the mature date....