Kim, I will when we get a chance to visit her garden. She is about moms age and either did not hear the phone ringing or was tired from the party yesterday and was not answering this morning. BUT, she left 3 of the roses from the bunch she picked yesterday, she said the rose has been there at least 20 years and is covered in blooms. She has lived there since the 50-60's and is on the Santa Barbara "Mesa" The roses she left are a good 4" across and look like either a very deep rich colored "Peace" or a lighter than Seil's HPF Granada photo and more like the ones from the Olympia Rose Society garden photo. I forgot to do a sniff test, but they were sitting outside with them yesterday so guessing the sniff test would have been nothing to smell. Mom is in love with them, so I will have to try and start a few cuttings of them I should note, I had no more planned rose bush location designated around the house. So no idea where it will end up, but it is from her friends place so it would end up and a special spot. Mom wants to visit one of her other friends rose gardens too, I might need a bigger green house.... (the local Rose Society visited this friends gardens this spring and she says she has hundreds of plants)

I was living in town when Mr. Walski was giving talks about the wild turkey project. Although the article describes the CT River valley, I think there were other release sites that weren't mentioned. I thought our town was one of them because of the corn, apples and water. We don't have apple orchards any more but although we are down to one dairy farm, a neighbor has quite a few beef cows (and lots of manure). We used to enjoy seeing the turkeys roost in pines along a corn field. As day was ending, they would gather and one by one fly up into the trees. The cattle farmer made improvements to the field since years of not keeping up with things let trees encroach on the field. About 100 feet of pines were cut back. There are plenty more pines but too much heavy equipment activity. The heavy equipment is now parked a distance away and finally we saw three male turkeys in our yard and then exploring the corn field. Last winter we counted as many as 60 coming down from the pines to see what they could get in our yard before making the tour to other places. I don't recalled seeing blue birds in winter before but this year we probably have 8. I counted 4 females and one male picking up suet scraps and thistle seed. We do not have nesting boxes up so I have no idea where they nest but it is probably somewhere behind our house. Thanks for posting the wonderful pictures. A friend has been getting some good shots at the Nashua airport and posting them on facebook.

Wow you all are amazing! Beautiful ideas! Thanks for all of the thoughts. You really have my wheels spinning now considering what a difference incorporating the sunroom makes. I am going to take some pictures of the sunroom structure (including underneath the structure) tomorrow and post it in case anyone is able to draw any conclusions from it. But until then, I can answer a few of the questions you had. The basement does have an exterior door, which is located under the sunroom (you have to walk up a few concrete steps to get to grade, at which point you can either exit into the yard or take the stairs up to the sunroom). The rest of the area under the sunroom is just a storage area where I keep bags of mulch, firewood, etc. I will check for more detail tomorrow,but the sunroom is supported by posts anchored into cement piers. What I don't know is whether those piers sit on a foundation or are just free-floating. I thought of two other things which might bode well for it being a well-supported structure which we could expand to: 1) our inspector told us he believes the sunroom is original to the house, so I would then assume it was built on a foundation (?); 2) the sunroom holds up the roofline - aka there is normal roofing above the sunroom, which makes me think the structure is strong enough to support the second story and roof and thus should be expandable (?) PS - Intriguing idea about moving the hallway to kitchen to the other end of the house and moving the doorway to keep traffic and noise away from the bedrooms. Currently we use back bedroom as a spare room and the room off the dining room as an office. Someday we will use one (probably back room) for a kid's bedroom. Thanks again and feel free to keep the creative juices flowing :)

Annpan, I thought of you again while I've been reading (rereading actually) The Brontes Went to Woolworth's by Rachel Ferguson. I'm not sure why I associate it with you, unless you have mentioned it as being one of your favorites. Is it? The Carne sisters -- Deirdre, Katrine, and Sheil (the last 'just out of the nursery') -- have invented a role-playing game. They, along with their mother, are interested in the theatre (Katrine is attending drama school). They choose a well-known person and proceed to imagine what that person's personal life is like. This goes on for a good while. Apparently this was similar to ways the real-life Bronte sisters liked to amuse themselves, something they did even as adults. Eventually however, Deirdre actually is introduced to the man whose life they have been embellishing so imaginatively -- and he agrees to be a Carne family friend! Was he, could he be, as interesting as the Carne sisters had made him? This 1931 book is good, gentle fun of the type that I'm not certain is written anymore. I smile a lot while reading it!