Thanks for all your kind words. I am just getting into this and love it. My imagination runs wild all day thinking of projects to do.....just not enough time in a day (or experience yet) as far as staining, painting and texturing, that is coming soon. I have decided to do a project that might take a little while, new pictures posted on my site (webshots). I am thinking of a big basin with a molting volcano in the middle with water bubbling out of the center and red led lights to give it a real volcano look. So far I have started on the volcano. I will start on the basin next week. The whole thing should be about 25" wide by 25" tall. Hope it works as planned. Here is a link that might be useful: See new pics

hahaha scully.... yeah....this may be a first ever on GW...I don't know! But ya know, in the chicken world, some people take landscaping around their chicken coop VERY seriously! I've seen pics to prove it! In my case, I thought it may just look nice, considering my chicken coop is "right there" where everyone sees it (front/side yard, but because of building permit codes, property lines and a pond in the back yard, this is the only place we could put it), I thought I might as well dress it up a little bit! I should go across the road and see if I can get a pic of the front yard as a whole....I've thought of making a bed to plant my basjoos, but I think then about plowing in the wintertime, and how the planting spot may accidentally get plowed (they plow piles into the yard...depending on how much snow we get, sometimes we run out of room to put it!) Just a silly fact for the day, did you know serious backyard chicken people NAME their chicken coops? "Coop De Ville" was one I remember seeing... many times has something to do with coop or hen...somewhere in there. Mine is named too...it's called the chicken coop...maybe you'll be lol-ing at that one. But....if I tropicalize it...perhaps we could turn it into the Tiki Coop....LOL. Back to being serious....there are some things I have in mind when I plant my basjoos (and maybe some cannas if I try that)....they need sun of course, I really don't want them out in the open/middle of nowhere because of the plow in the winter, so I want them nestled against something preferrably, and I'd like them to be in the front yard. My front yard faces north....so because of the lack of sun, up against the house is out. Or...if I do put them out in the middle of nowhere in the yard, I have these big blue drums with the top cut off (used for horse water tanks at one time)...I've considered covering their mulch piles with those...put a big cinder block over it to keep them from blowing away, and if the plow driver doesn't see that...then he's got a problem!

Thank you all. As I said, I did this late at night and I didn't spend a lot of time with it. Next time, I would make a good template. With wrapping paper, there will be so many options. I'm going to be keeping my eyes opened for a good plaid for next Christmas. Christmas Tree Shops have shades for $1? Wow, I wish we had one near by. I've never seen the chandelier shades for less than $4 except when they're on sale. The ones I have were $2.50 on close out. - Gail

You know, you should be able to see what his IP address is. Then look it up and you can see where he's located. Looks like this and should be at the bottom of the email he sent you: IP addresses consist of four numbers separated by periods (also called a 'dotted-quad') and look something like 127.0.0.1. The strange thing is that nothing like this text comes up when googling. It sounds quite personalized. Are you sure it couldn't be from a friend or relative who's trying to invite you to Monaco for Valentine's Day? Here is a link that might be useful: IP address