Hi Marie ... I've been a caregiver for 34 years and will be having a patient in here, one at a time. I get a lot of hospice pts who aren't tracking with concentration so providing them an Eden with lots of birdwatching is a soothing enjoyment for them. There's birdfeeders out every window and bubblers, bird baths, and fountains. Lots of songbirds! Plus we've built bungee cord "gyms" for their pleasure until all these 300+ baby trees get bigger. I bought this house in May 2005. It was rural. Now it's suburban and in 2 years it will be urban with a gigantic shopping center going in a few blocks away with a major transportation hub (car, bus, Amtrak, light rail, multi-use paths). Portland area is experiencing a building and infill frenzy. There's a very good group of nature shops here in the greater Portland metro regions called Backyard Birdshop. They sell anything related to birds and great yard/garden/home high-class stuff. Their seeds are fresh and reasonably priced. After trying everything, our birds have voted for the shelled black oil sunflower pieces and the pacific no waste combo -- sunflower, peanuts, millet, corn, all shelled. The finches love the niger thistle that has its own type of feeder (small holes). Also use lots of suet feeders. Since there's so many feeders around the house the birds don't fight at crowded spots but flit to the next convenient station. The number of birds comes and goes. Right now there's a sharp-shinned hawk, sometimes a cooper hawk, that is haunting the yard so that's cutting the seed expenditure way down since the birds stay away. These hawks eat little birds. All our feeders are made of recycled plastic lumber which looks great, like wood, good color, and never cracks chips fades splinters etc -- makes them very easy to clean. Examples from the web of 2 types we use: We see chickadees, an amazing variety of juncos and sparrows, lots of finches (lesser gold, American gold, house, purple, pine siskin), stellar and scrub blue jays, flocks of flickers, bushtits, varied thrush, downy woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, cowbirds, crows, mourning doves, black-headed grosbeaks, great blue heron, anna + rufous hummingbirds, barn swallows, nuthatches, robins, starlings when they have babies, cedar waxwings, and spotted towhees, The yard is continually fertilized with ample amounts of guano, and we're grateful when it rains.

You guys are gonna make me cry! But thank you for the kind words. I think gardening changes everybody for the better! I just wish I had more time to post these days. I always manage to read the posts, and thereÂs often something I want to say to respond, but when IÂm not too tired IÂm running around trying to get all kinds of stuff done before I leave again. Today IÂm running in and out all day trying to get everything watered well again before I leave for 3 more days tomorrow! And IÂm trying to get things ready for the swapÂand for my vacation, since IÂm leaving just three days after the swap. And I still have to iron a blouse for tomorrow, and make sandwiches to take with me tomorrow, etc, etc, etc........... But IÂve been wanting to get back to this thread again to tell you, HighAlt, that the Crocosmia you showed in the picture must be the one that was left over from somebody elseÂdonÂt know whoÂafter last yearÂs swap. The one I brought for you was way too tiny to be that big this year! So somebody else gets credit for that oneÂbut itÂs sure lookin good! Steve, I havenÂt seen any SLC layovers lately, and donÂt even know if DEN has any right now, so maybe some day IÂll need to just hop on a plane and come out there and you can meet me at the airport for lunch or something, and IÂll come right back. IÂd love to meet you! Just donÂt ask me when! You wouldnÂt want to drive on down to Capitol Reef Natl. Park and come with me on my return trek to The Tanks, would ya!!! Gotta go! I want to try to get the swap email done yet tonite before I leave again. Thanks again, guys, Skybird

Thank you everyone for all the wonderful compliments..Guess by the postive comments here...the 'Mardi Gras' tree gets 'Two Thumbs Up' !! lol Magpi.. it is hard to take the tree down after the holidays. The room just becomes..just another room w/o it. I think that's why so many have been decorating earlier and earlier, to enjoy all the decorations longer. bright.. almost all the crystal ornaments are glass, some are acrylic > however. Those stars are glass. The train under the tree, is such a Tradition for us... I also wanted to pass that feeling on to the Gkids too. shee...I bought the crystal garland years ago, and I remember I had to keep adding until I got the right amount. We used to have 10' trees and this one is 9'. There are approximately 6 strands of 18' of the crystal, and two 36' of the silver. I got the silver onces from Home Depot this yr. @ $3.99 ea box. I did see the same ones in Walgreens at a better buy though. mary..... Thank you for such lovely compliments. It's nice to know I've inspired you!! lol sandi..thank you too. So you remember having a train under the tree too. It always brings back nice memories of 'Christmas Past'.. jane

A couple of days ago I found that I could search my father�s mother�s family even further than I could his father�s, and that took me back to South Carolina on the French side of the family. I could go even further back on the father�s side if I wanted to contact my relatives in Switzerland, but I would have to write to them in German, as their English is not so good, for some reason. I might do that at some point; my German is very good, if not modern. Anyway, the other night I had a dream that I was going to a family reunion at some large house in the country, and I hardly knew any of the relatives there. I had a suitcase and traveling gear with me, and I set the suitcase down in the dining room or kitchen. More and more cousins kept arriving, and some of them seemed like sketchy characters, whom I felt I might not be able to trust. The house kept getting bigger also, until it morphed into a warehouse that had lockers in one of the hallways. I put my suitcase in one of the lockers for safe keeping but left my traveling gear in the dining room, unsure of what I should do with it. I thought I should keep some of it with me but was convinced that it was okay in the dining room. I ventured out into other rooms in the warehouse (it had multiple levels), and eventually I discovered that I could no longer find the lockers where I had stored my suitcase. I began to become nervous at this point but told myself that it was just a dream and that I would find everything when I woke up. However, when I tried to find the dining room with the rest of my things, I began to panic and became very lost in the warehouse, having no idea of where I was or where anything was. At that point I decided that I HAD to wake up, but when I did wake up, my pulse was racing, and I felt almost like I was having a panic attack. I can�t tell whether the anxiety was caused by my blood pressure medicine (which seemed to have the opposite effect) or whether it was from the virus I had that was coming back. To calm myself back down, I started reading again. Right now I am reading anthropology books at night to help get to sleep and I am currently in the Upper Pleistocene Epoch, which is one of my favorite periods, but it might be causing me to think too much about my ancestors. I found out yesterday that my health insurance will help pay for psychotherapy, and so I am thinking about looking for a therapist to see if I have issues that I need to resolve. They usually put me on more medication, but that might be okay. I think I have a chemical imbalance that makes me psycho sensitive to certain medications. It might also have something to do with what I eat. I'm not sure how much more I want to find out about my ancestors at this point - I'm sort of afraid they might come back to haunt me. My famaily has been in Texas since it was an independent republic, but that was not so long ago. Lars