I've been lurking in this forum getting ideas for a school garden where I volunteer. You all have great ideas. Very inspiring. Our local garden shop had some great signs in recently, but they are a bit pricey. Here are my favorites: On plant marker type signs: Weedum invasium Twigga mortis Gardenitis uncontrollius Plantus unknownus Bloomis notimus (Duh, it took me several visits before I realized this one was funny) On signs and rocks: Tickle the Earth with a hoe, She laughs with a harvest If friends were flowers, I'd pick you This place is for the birds (decorate with bird or two and place it near the bird feeder or birdhouse) To Weed or Not to Weed That is the Garden Wishing you Butterfly Mornings Wildflower Afternoons How Lovely is the Silence of Growing Things To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow A beautiful garden is a work of heart Peace to all who enter here Bless this garden Angels help my garden grow I hope to make a few of these into signs myself. I found a large flat bright yellow plastic platter at a thrift store that may be the "canvas" for my first attempt.

In case anyone missed the PBS special The Botany of Desire which premiered Wednesday, October 28, 2009, you can still watch the entire program online. It's incredible. Book turned documentary. BOTANY OF DESIRE is a documentary which tells the utterly original story of everyday plants and the way they have domesticated humankind. An interpretation of the relationship between plants and people. This two-hour documentary explores plant evolution and takes viewers from the potato fields of Peru and Idaho, the apple forests of Kazakhstan, and the tulip markets of Amsterdam. View online in it's entirety: here This is another related program by the same presenter on LINK TV (a cable access channel) which is timely: Deep Agriculture Traditional methods of agriculture in most developed nations have long ignored environmental concerns. Factors such as soil erosion, water shortage and the impact of chemicals on bio-systems have been overlooked in favour of massive crop yields and cheaper food. But what impact does this have on our health and our environment? View online in it's entirety: here __________________________ Sit down with a cup of tea or coffee and witness the evolution of an Organic Kitchen Garden.

Before I launch of into the ether, LavenderLass..... Your husband is doing OK now, and y'all are over and out of perils and pitfalls that befell y'all? This is gonna be a fairly long ramble, 'cause I’m really good at such things, and I sorta kinda in a way wanna brag about it all anyway..... We started on our new place at the end of this past June. Well, if you count the well and septic as starting, it was the first week of June We have a nice 1888 sq ft house on a couple of acres surrounded by a couple of acres of county owned "Storm water run off ROW" right down town here in the middle of the big city, Well, OK, with the "finished basement" I reckon it's really more like 3456 sq ft, but around here nobody counts a finished basement as part of the house. It's kind of just expected. We have always had a place way out in the sticks since we first got together 33 years ago. We had a really nice almost 2.5 miles off the road down a private ROW in the middle of an Appalachian foothills hollow out of the way almost 40 acres that we bought when the kids started middle school and we decided I was keeping the "new" job and that we would move closer to the real world than our 105 acres in the middle nowhere Tennessee was. Then a moron in a great big hurry passed a school bus on a curve and there I was. To make a real long story short enough to bear, everybody but me thought that being a "Neurological disaster area" that far off the road with no neighbors and cell phone service only if you're in the right spot is totally unreasonable. My wife said she would be OK with me finding a place just as country just half as close to home (which would have been 13.75 miles) and half as far off the road with a neighbor or two...... Which of course no one thought I would ever be able to do. So, I asked everyone everywhere that I came across and looked and looked and drove down every un-named pig path around and at last found a very nice 17.3 acres located almost right where three counties meet right in the very middle of the NC Piedmont. Unbelievably rural for considering its' being just 7.5 miles from the square in the booming metropolis of Mocksville, NC. and pretty much equi-distant to Salisbury, Lexington, Statesville, and Wake Forest University/Baptist Medical Centerin Winston-Salem. And it's just 47 miles to the terminal entrance at Piedmont-Triad International Airport in Greensboro, NC. and 67 miles to the terminal entrance at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, NC too. C was at first in shock that I actually found such a place and was a tough sell on me getting us this, but she finally realized that I was never going to shut up about it said if I could swing the deal that she would sign her name on the dotted line right next to mine. Everybody concerned, the people selling it, the real estate agent, the neighbors, the county folks, the people down the road, everybody, said we were never going to get it at what I was willing to pay. Everybody, except me of course, had little enough faith in my unfathomable charm and and bull dog (though many call it bull something else) tenacity to think that I would ever be able to talk us into making such a deal. But, I DID! And so C just like she said she would ended up signing her pretty little signature right next to mine and it's since Dec 2013, it's ours..... Very private at a little over 1.3 miles off the pavement across three cattle grates through pasture and woods down an excellent shared private drive with one neighbor 500 - 600 feet distant on each side of the home-site. A school teacher couple with no kids on one side, and a retired serviceman and wife on the other, and an absolutely palatial estate behind across the river. Due to the location on an oxbow of the river, and being in a three county "Designated Agricultural District", that's all the neighbors there will be. And the "Designated Agricultural Area" is bigger than this whole one town one high school county of maybe 40,000 is, and near as I can tell has a population density of 32 per square mile, which for east of the Appalachians, especially in the Ga/SC/NC/Va Piedmont, means it's virtually empty. Sort of a pie shaped property with almost 2100' on the S Yadkin River. From a +75' bluff above the river down to several hundred feet of actual real sandy beach right down along and with two great big and deep swimming holes including one with a great big rock sticking up right in the middle for an excellent diving platform into its' 12 - 13 foot deep hole, with 300' fronting the "drive", +3000' along the longest side of the property with +1200' along the "opposite" side. And the river is from beginning to end one of the very few NC state "Protected Watershed"s and there willnever be any kind of development adjacent to it, no industrial plants, no sewer plants no nothing except woods and farmland. C had serious doubts about the rational of buying this place, but, the chances that anybody could now talk her into selling bit and buying something else, are substantially less than zero..... Approx. 5.5 acres of very nice and healthy pasture/field - with close to 12 acres in large mature hardwood's from level river-front floodplain to gently sloping to fairly steep hillside. And several acres of those hardwoods down in the flood plain that will one day make another several acres of beautiful shaded summertime pasture too. We have us a new permitted and tested and approved 282' well with static water at 60', and a new permitted and tested and approved septic system installed. We bought a really odd 14 X 68 half of a double wide with an odd 2 separate pitches roof that we stripped out from end to end and is now in the process of being completely and totally ever so slowly redone by ME formerly 2 bed/2 bath - now being turned into a luxurious 960 sq ft 1 bath, 1 bedroom with a small alcove, an entrance-hallway/laundry/closet, a 9'6" X 13' "spare" room (for ME!), and a large sewing room and walk in closet. VERY rustic in the outside appearance as the neighbors are like minded and none of us are concerned with what the drive by traffic that will never be, nor are any of us about impressing the county tax folks or anybody else except for the Great Blue Herons, Beavers, Bald Eagles, Deer, Turkey, Fox, Bobcats. Rabbits, Raccoons, Skunks, Possums, Wood Ducks, and according to one local lunatic, Bigfoot too, that are all in abundance here. A wonderful retirement place for us, our now grown and hopefully permanently gone kids, our 5 dogs, horses, cattle, goats, and chickens, and our peace of mind too..... You could look and look, but it's it's absolutely no exaggeration to say that no one will ever find another "almost like being in the mountains" place like this anywhere in all of the Ga/SC/NC/Va Piedmont. OK. The youngest of the great big Great Pyrenees wanting to go out and play in the snow, I am done with my brag..... As next week is the first time this season since early November that we'll see temperatures hit 60F, work is about to once again, begin in earnest. And regular reports of perils and "progress" and pic's too are soon to follow.

Thanks, Marinagal! I think our decisions at this point is to consult an architect, not with this specific idea per se, but for his suggestions on adding light/air/views to the MBR. Thanks, Cam. That is pretty! CL Blakeley, I won't! Mabel, good idea. Snowfalls can be highly localized. LOL, Annie. We are about 10 miles inland, and it just seems to us the weatherguys always say. "it will turn to rain on the coast, with higher accumulations North and West of the area". We often get snow here, just 10 miles from friends in Westport who say "what snow". I guess since the ocean never freezes it can reduce snowfall? IDK Thank you, Krycek. Oldbat, I actually drink tea in the am, usually iced in the summer! And DH makes a ritual of going out for coffee and the paper, come to think of it. Sonic, excellent point! Aww, Eandhl, thank you. LOL, Rafor! To be fair, the other one was a tear down! But all in all we are happier with this choice. Eclectic cottage, your community sound so wonderful. And I agree about the vibe. We don't want a proper and formal house, in fact this house is more formal then what we planned to build or envisioned in our heads. At the end of the day, it is about relaxing and enjoying where you are, and in an odd way I think quirks and imperfections make a place homier ... Thank you, Rosie! JoaniePoanie, I am just terrible and wait and see, I confess. It is even worse here because I have been waiting almost a year trying to clear up that other property! KSWL, Thanks for the tip on water drainage! As for your idea of expanding the porch, goodness, what are you trying to do to my budget!? I better not tell DH your idea, he is a sucker for verandah space. As a side note, your point about the tradition of elevated areas from which to view the water was such lovely writing. : )