Well....around here the only thing that grows wild (it is an invasive species) that has berries this time of year that look similar to small blueberries and has thorns is the common buckthorn Rhamnus cathartica but I would not call them sweet smelling. There are others like the alternate-leaf dogwood Cornus alternifolia that get blue berries that are similar looking to elderberries but they don't have thorns. A picture of what you are trying to ID would help immensely. FataMorgana Here is a link that might be useful: Cornus alternifolia

mazer, I will be happy to expound. First, I have had dogs, cats, and horses for half my life or more. Snakes, lizards, rats, and a couple birds for shorter times. I worked for a vet for three years(early 60's) while in high school. I even performed the spaying operation on one of my most favorite dogs under the watchful eye and guidance of the vet. I have extensive experience in treating horses/dogs for various injuries. My current dogs are a GSD/chow mix and a whippet mix. I am not able to walk either dog. So, I have to invent ways of exercising them. On bad weather days, when walking or exercising would be near impossible, it is a fact they do not need as much food. In fact, Molly(the whippet mix) often does not finish her food on days like that. Max, the GSD mix) has a much lower metabolism and does not need as much food, since his activity level is much lower. When we got Molly from the pound, she was about 20 pounds underweight. It was actually painful to pet her, much less look at her condition. The pound was feeding her Pedigree, which is my dry choice. She has terrible issues with elimination. I wondered if the problem was just the instability of her circumstance, she had been difficult to catch, was afraid of literally everything and everyone. Turns out the problem may have been some of that, but was mainly her inability to process beef/chicken products. We had her on twice a day feedings to put the necessary weight back on her, which very slowly occurred for about two weeks. I finally recognized her distress was digestive in nature(the only time in my experience with my dogs I had seen this) and put her on a two a day diet of lamb and rice. In five days, she had put on too much weight! So, I cut the amount in half. The two a days had Max causing a problem when he did not get fed(he is the Alpha dog) and Molly was reluctant to eat when he did not. I started feeding Max along with Molly---halving his amount. Both started gaining excess weight on a diet of Pedigree dry/canned mix. So, I went back to once a day(evenings) feeding schedules and they have no more anxieties or weight problems. They both have lots of energy in the mornings, both vets I use feel they are at optimum weights and are in prime condition. I run the house as a pack. I am pack leader, Max is second, Molly bottom. Nolly will not start eating until Max is almost finished, which is normal pack behavior. If Max were to attempt to take her food, she would( and did early on until Max accepted) fight for it. Again normal pack behavior. Molly devils Max constantly when playing/exercising. H3e takes most of it, maintaining the Alpha position, but joining in for running/chasing/fun stuff. I have found Molly can do the running/prey drive activities by chasing soccer balls I am able to kick for her. There is enough room in out yard for her to reach full speed for short distances. She can 'catch' the balls, and pick them up to fulfil her instinctive drives. Shew ultimately destroys them and can play even more with the pieces. Max is first a guard dog, and second a member of the pack. He needs Molly(he actually picked her out from several that were auditioned at the pound) to keep his protective edge. He was also a rescue, before the local police could get a warrant to seize and euthanize him as a danger to society. I rehabilitated him as a guard dog. The area in which I lived at the time made it advantageous to have a guard dog. My previous guard dog had finally made it to the end of his 15 year life. I know what I am doing, Over 50 years of raising/training dogs proves that, at least to me and the vets I use. I raised a Malamute, a poodle, and a handful of mixed breeds of all types and sizes. Shorty, a chihuahua mix my wife fell in love with when he was a puppy made it to 20 on the same diet and feeding schedule I use now. Might have lasted longer, but cancer of the back end made it necessary to put him down. There are many ways to train/keep/use/love dogs. I have never had free feed dogs. My DIL does. I never crated a dog until I got Molly. She no longer needs crating, but often sleeps by choice in hers(with the door always open now. I have had two a day feeding dogs. I always see if that is the best option. For the last several, it has not been necessary.

Hi Weejee, nice to see a new name here. Welcome to the painting forum. Now that you have joined in, please continue to do so. We have a variety of painters and painting styles here, so hope you find lots that you enjoy. Have you checked out our gallery? And we also have a conversations area for off topic chatting. You can find links to them in the middle close to the top of the page. Please join in with questions, comments, or just to chat. Luvs

I really enoyed planning my kitchen (with help from here). It's not perfect because there are always constraints in any project, but I'm really happy with how it all came out. I remember your post from before. Do you have an updated layout to post? One thing I was thinking is that you could extend the run on the right side of your drawing to fill the available wall space up to where the patio doors start. If you want to extend further you could make the patio access just a single door instead of double. Your trash can move to your prep zone and be a pull-out. That spot might be good for the kid-stack. Here are some of the things that I feel we got right: (You should definately read all that design stuff that Buehl posted and start making a long list of all your thoughts so you can prioritize and widdle the list down later 1) Measure: This is free. Measure all your items (such as cookie trays, serving trays, casserole dishes, crock pot, prep tools like cuisinart, blender, juicer, stock pot, pots and pans, slow cooker, etc, basically everything). Then you will be able to design drawers the right size so you have a place for everything. If you're building a pantry, you can plan to store some of the large items in there, but you still have to measure them so that you build the pantry accordingly. Also, are you storing seasonal things in the kitchen such as holiday dishes and serving items? Plan on where all that will go. 2) Ask: This is free too. Ask your family members if there is something that they really want to be incorporated in the kitchen. For our family of 6, only younger DD and DH each had a specific request. DD (age 9) was just getting into baking, so she wanted an additional electrical outlet away from the all the zones, so that she could plug in her mixer without being near me if I'm prepping, cooking or cleaning. There was a perfect place behind the trash pull-out in the island seating area. Now we call that side of the island the baking zone. DH wanted to be able to access his blender and juicer without having to get down on his hands and knees to dig through a cabinet. He got a tall drawer where those items can stand up straight and are easy to access. 3) Hide the MW: We like cheap not-built-in microwaves because we don't use it very much. Cabinet builder made a spot for it where we can close the cabinet doors if we want to. The doors slide back out of the way when it's open. But if you are a heavy microwave user, then you might want it built-in or above the oven so that it is more prominent and accessible. 4) Almost all drawers, maybe a cabinet if you need it: Agree about having lots of drawers. I do, however, have two shallow cabinets in the island where the stools are. It's wide but not deep. We ended up doing that because the island is 4' wide and on the opposite side there are drawers. That left a wasted space on the stool-side, so we put cabinets there. In there I put things that I don't use often, such as long serving trays, a long skinny bread basket, and extra casserole dishes for Thanksgiving and other gatherings. These would not fit well in a drawer. Also in there go vases and other things I want to access but not often. Sometimes one cabinet is needed somewhere. It just depends on what you are storing. 5) Trash can at the prep zone. 6) "Kid/sports stack": For school age kids and people that are always packing coolers for sports, having a stack for them is great. I call ours the "kid stack." We put in a 4 drawer stack at the end of a run. In the top are the school lunch totes, school cutlery, wet wipes, etc. Next drawer has small lunch tote sized water bottles, insulated food bowls for school, reusable snack and sandwich bags. Next drawer is the snack drawer. In there we have all manner of snacks that they can grab while packing their lunches. The bottom drawer has sports water bottles. After the kitchen was finished they actually started packing their own lunches because it was all set up to be easy. Also when people are leaving for sports, they can load a small ice chest (kid stack is right by ice maker), throw in some snacks and water bottles. This stack is not anywhere near my cook, prep, or clean up zone so we're not tripping over each other in the morning. 7) Coffee/tea stack: If you are coffee and tea drinkers, see if you can put a drawer stack under where you keep your coffee maker. Ours is a 3 drawer stack. Top 2 drawers are all about coffee and tea, and the bottom drawer has dishtowels. 8) Bright LED lighting on dimmers. It's so frustrating to not have good light in a kitchen because it is a work zone. But at night or while entertaining you want to turn it down, so have everything on dimmers and try to incorporate under cabinet or over cabinet lighting if you can. 9) Cleverly placed electrical outlets: Place your outlets as low as allowed and turned sideways. Try to match them as well as you can to your backsplash material so they blend in. If you have an area where you don't want to see the outlets (for us this is a long run that is away from the zones, and has glass cabinets and such, so it's the "pretty part"). There I didn't want to interrupt the pretty backsplash with outlets, so we put an outlet strip up under the cabinets. This works for outlets that don't have something always plugged in. But for things that are pretty much always plugged in such as coffee maker and toaster, it doesn't work bc you'd see the cord; for those a low/sideways outlet is best so the cord is hidden behind. Note about that -- since the outlet strips are there (where under-cabinet lighting would normally be installed), we turned the under-cabinet lights around backwards and mounted them under the cabinet, but in the front rather than the back. 10) Venting: Have an appropriately powerful vent over the cooktop. My DS has NO venting in her kitchen. It's awaful and this is a $$$$ house. It's so stupid that the builder did that and the previous owner never addressed it. 11) Niche above cooktop: Before the remodel, our cooktop was in front of a window and I got in the habit of putting the salt, pepper and olive oil on the window sill. When we remodeled the cooktop moved to a regular wall. So we made a niche with a sill where we put these things. I like having the basics within easy reach. Mistakes/oversights: - I forgot to plan a place to hang the dishtowel. This really bugs older DD. - I didn't think about the paper towels. We have them on the counter. But after we finished, I saw a picture where someone had built the paper towel holder into the place where a drawer would be under the counter. It was such an awesome idea, but too late for me. My thoughts on your layout: