Hello and Welcome Alan Glad to have you join in. This will be my first year for winter sowing and am a little worried about it. My good lady friends have talked me into trying it the year. I guess it is worth it if I don't have all of that mess in the house again. I know that there are a few things I will still need to start early in the house but not like my normal seed starting mess. Grow lights on every wall of one of my bedrooms, extra heat and moisture in that room. Boy will my husband be so happy that it all isn't in the house. Again....Welcome Best of luck Martha

Hey pinktoes! If I remember correctly, you're in GA. We lived there for about 26 years before moving back to the frigid midwest 14 years ago. Our building plans have changed a lot now that we're sliding into our senior years. And sliding is just what we may do when trying to retrieve our mail and newspapers in an icestorm. The boxes will be at the curb. I guess we should just make a leisurely walk for it through the grass. A fall in the grass would be softer. But we still have to traverse some concrete before hitting the grassy area. Maybe we'll just call on a younger neighbor to slip and slide the mail and papers to our front door. We're hovering around the freezing mark right now. Most of last week's snowfall has melted due to rain. I don't know what conditions are favorable for digging our basement, but the builder is confident he can git er done. This should be an interesting winter for us.

Great news---woo hoo! DD went to OSU---loved, loved, loved it. It's a huge school but doesn't feel like it. And they were great when their off-campus house had a fire---really helped the girls find housing in short order. I can't say enough good things about OSU. And of course, since he is into football, the Buckeye fans are hard to beat! DD graduated in 2008 with a degree in Health Information Mgmt. She interned at the OSU Med Center junior/senior year. She moved back home and worked at NIH for 9 months, then got offered a job back at the Med Center. She worked there for 4 years and basically got her MHA for free. She is now working as a consultant for a small company, still living in Columbus. She's pretty happy there still, but it's becoming a little more difficult socially as her friends marry and/or move away. She has a better standard of living there--can afford her own nice apartment....she'd have to have roomates if she lived here(DC area) so she's torn about moving back. DS got into Indiana but not the special program he wanted so went elsewhere. I think it would have been his first choice....another great school and campus/college town. Can't wait to see where your son lands....it's an exciting time!

I guess one could say I cheated on this one.. When I was in the Air Force I was stationed in Texas, Arkansas, Massachusetts & W.German. After I got out of the AF I drove 18 wheelers on long trips for over ten years and where I would be out on the road 4 or 5 months at a time. I have been in all 48 continuos states plus Alaska and 5 Provinces of Canada. From there I went into the construction trades and I have lived an worked in 10 different states from Arizona, Texas, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi,Georgia to Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylania and Massachusetts. I was born in Idaho and have made a couple extended visits with kinfolks there and I was raised on a dairy farm in Ohio. I was living in Youngstown, Ohio when I first retired and to put it mildly, I was not the least happy there. Try to imagine a city of 90,000ppl that averages in excess of 50 murders a year. In that area it is not a matter of whether your house might be broken into, but rather, when and how often. I was sitting there contemplating this very question, where do I want to retire too, when one night the phone rang. It was my old friend Jan from Massachusetts. She and I had a friendship like brother & sister way back in the late 70's and over the years we had managed to stay in touch even though it was from a distance. She informed me that when she upgraded her cell phone plan they gave her 4 phones and she has a national plan, so she was sending me a cell phone to use. She said she averaged 600 rollover minutes a month so if I kept it under 600 minutes I could use it free and all calls between she and I were free. A week later I had the phone and we talked about an hour a day for three or four weeks until we realized that we were both single at the moment (before that, when she was single I was married & vice versa,LOL) so we began discussing the idea of sharing her house until we could decide where we wanted to move to. A week later I was in Massachusetts, where I have been for the last two years. When we began discussing our future retirement plans we both agreed that we wanted four seasons. We then wanted a quiet comparitively low crime area and one that has features for seniors. Then a good selection of shopping facilities within a short easy commute and finally, plenty of parks and recreaton areas as well as rural scenic areas. Then I tossed into the mix that I had once again taken up serious photography so I wanted plenty of historical sites, points of interest and both indoor and outdoor activities And finally, just to add to the mix, a good public transportation system. When we looked around, we realized we have it all right here. Not one, but three huge world class hospitals within 10 miles, the Bay State Medical Center is a teaching hospital that is actually rated in the top ten in the USA and higher than Boston General, which is the Harvard Medical School hospital. We have a very low crime rate and a top notch police force, but then all our govt services are top notch. Our city has its own electrical generating company and they have only had three power outages that lasted more than 15 minutes since 1940. In fact, last year, after the tornado went through here the power company had to cut the power to our street for one hour while they cut some trees and repaired the lines, and we got a written appology and a $20credit in our next electric bill. Last year we had two 40" snowfalls within a week and many of the local cities and towns around us were snowed in for days, but in our city the deepest the snow ever got on a street was 2". We have recycle pickup one day and trash pickup the next, and there is no limit as to how much trash you can set out, by example, last week a lady across the street set out two couches, a huge chair and about 7 huge trash cans, and they took it all without question. Our street is swept by a street sweeper truck twice a week. Now for our shopping commute...It's 1.2miles to Walmart superstore & Home Depot, B.J.' wholesale(like Sams Club) and Big Y grocery is closer, and CVS pharmacy on the wasy. A huge polish meat market about three blocks away, the farmers produce market 1/2mile, 8 major groceries within 5 miles, or we can go one block and jump on the interstate and go two miles to the mall at Holyoke. The local PVTA(Pioneer Valley Transit Authority) buss stop is about a 1/2block from the house and the PVTA routes cover 11 cities and towns within a 34 mile radius adn senior can get a monthly buss pass for $21, which provides unlimited rides on the entire routing. 1/2 mile from the house we can get on the Massachusetts Turnpike (Interstate 90) and go 90 mile east to Boston or 3000 miles west to Seatle Washington or we can take I-91 south to Long Island Sound or north up through Vermont all the way to the Candian Border. Now add to that, I have a list of over 300 historical sites, some dating back before the Revolutionary War, all within 30 miles of our house. When all was said and done,we decided to stay right here.