Chelcass...I LOVE the pic of the hens & roosters behind the chicken wire fence & Campbell sitting there in front ...just shrugging his shoulders & wondering what all the fuss is about! LOL! Your chick babies are cute, too! Looks like Campbell had a GREAT time in TN! Just "down home" on the farm! I also LOVe the pic where he is admiring your old windows w/mosaicing! Looks great on your garden shed! Looks like you got some good FREIGHT off the train! Lots of loot! Have fun w/it & share more pics! Like that train lantern in the last pic! TFS! Jeanne S.

You make a good point about the music belonging to the estate cynic. I am surprised though that anything can be released at this point. In the 'real' it takes much longer for property of the estate to be release...any property. I guess it's possible Jackson made some provisions in his will regarding the music? I expect there will be lots of people contesting Jackson's will, the custody of his children and what happens to his belongings...... Lori

Helen, That is too close. I've had close calls like that before and they scared me to death. When I've had that sort of a close call, it is hard for me to go back into that area again because I am so afraid another snake will be there. I did notice that it was pretty wide and wondered if it either was about to give birth, or if it had had a really good day and found something good-sized to eat. You know, it is that time of the year. I think the copperheads here usually reproduce in August. I don't really have any suggestion about how to pick tomatoes in an area where you already have found snakes. Sometimes with beans or southern peas, I carry a 3 or 4' long metal green fence post with me (I use them to stake tomato cages) and stick it into the area where I am about to pick beans or southern peas. I move the foliage around a bit and look carefully at the ground and at the plants themselves trying to make sure there's not a snake in there. It is easy to do that with legume plants that are more lightweight and move around pretty easier. It would be harder with tomato plants that are sprawling on the ground as they are heavier and cannot be shifted around easily with a stick or pole. I've always felt pretty safe in the garden early in the day, assuming that the snakes already are out of the garden by daybreak. The encounter with a timber rattler that was headed into my garden, not out of it, a little after 9 a.m. one day a couple of weeks ago made me stop and think twice about that. Even though they tend to be nocturnal, I've had them in the garden more than I'd like during the daylight hours. Copperheads are not as aggressive as some other venomous snakes, or at least at our house they aren't. Even the timber rattlers would rather warn you to go away than to waste their venom on you. Chris stepped on a copperhead one night when he was getting out of his car when he was in college. It didn't even bite him, for which we were grateful, but as he pulled his leg back into the car and closed the door, it slithered under his car and headed straight for us and a bunch of our friends. We were sitting there in lawn chairs, so Tim had no choice but to shoot it because it was coming right towards us. Another time, back not too long after we moved here, Chris and I stepped right into a bunch of copperheads. It was a mother and a bunch of babies and they were moving across the pasture towards the pond in broad daylight and we stepped right into the middle of them in tall grass, saw them and then jumped and ran away. It is hard to believe that the adult at least didn't strike us. Ever since that happened, we always mow 6-8' wide paths through our pastures and only walk in the mowed pathways. At least that way we have a good chance of seeing the snakes before we step on them. Please be careful! You've had too many close calls lately. Dawn

It is crazy. We were so wet, and flooding, and with fungal and bacterial diseases breaking out on every shrub, tree, weed and grass. Now the green has gone brown and dry. This happened a few years back. I think it was in the summer of 2008. We'd had all that rain (and flooding, sound familiar?) in 2007 and the 2008 started out pretty decently. We seemed green and wet and it was nice enough, and then it was like we hit a brick wall and suddenly were hot and dry. This month reminds me very much of that year, and from what I remember of 2008, we ended up miserably hot, dry and back in drought with tons of wildfires through April 2009. I really don't want for this year to end up like that year did. I did water the garden today. I left the gate open and the chickens were all over the place. They like the damp mulch, and they weren't really bothering anything. Since I've been letting them into the garden for a few hours a day, the grasshoppers are disappearing. If they start pecking tomatoes (which they haven't done at all yet), then I'll have to keep the gate closed and ban the poultry from the garden.