Yup, NAF, I'm right there with ya. My grass looks like native pasture and has native pussytoes, thistle, alfalfa, sage, quack grass, brome grass, native grasses, big bare spots where not even weeds will grow, and dandelions galore. We have an ENORMOUS farm yard, and half of it was once cultivated, so mowing it with the ride-around feels like a horrible circus ride from hell. (and my tractors shocks aren't too happy) My flowerbed, which was dug deeply and amended, already seems to be reverted back to straight clay in some places. :( I need to do more composting, because peat moss sure doesn't do the trick. Most of my lily leaves are starting to turn yellow from all this rain. My martagons have either iron chlorosis or serious over-watering issues. One of my Emily Carr roses still hasn't come back. A bunch of plants that I would have been happy to have go away DID come back. My Josee lilac hasn't come back, and I seem to have lost the bill for it, so I can't even cash in on the guarantee. Our long lane has really bad washboard and pot holes but we can't afford the $800 price tag for 2 loads of gravel. My round pen is under water, and my 4 year old colt still hasn't been ridden! Nothing except some NOID red tulips are blooming. My plants are all leggy. My Black Lace elder died. *siiiiiggghhh* Oh I could just go on for pages. Suffice to say...I feel your pain. But I AM optimistic that the sun is going to kick in (this coming week by the sounds of it) and then the garden is going to kick into super high gear and everything will bust into bloom. Sure, there will probably be some thistle blooms too, and certainly some dandelion bloom...but blooms just the same. It'll happen, NAF. Its got to.

For many years, there was a den of red foxes in the woods down by the creek. A pair of them used to run across my patio occasionally, at night, and scare the bejeebies out of me! Guess they kept the bunny population at near zero. In the 40+ years I've lived here, have only seen two babies for a couple of days, sitting in my front lawn and then they were gone. A tenant in a nearby rental property had a white buck that escaped a couple of times and came down to check out my Hosta buffet. The second time he came, I met the owner and invited him to dine on his choice of fried or stew, if his rabbit escaped again. It never came back.

brook, I used to hear them here all the time, but then several years went by and I heard nothing. Then last year I heard them once or twice. Funny you mention predators.......as I was following one, trying to get its picture, a hawk flew overhead. :( I quickly left the Bobwhite alone. I live in central Indiana. Isn't it strange to find 3 of them now, with a foot of snow on the ground and extremely cold temps? We have 35 acres of land.......a mix of woods and growing up fields. We have tons of big brush piles, so hopefully they've found some shelter in those. I put some dried corn around the areas they seemed to frequent. I have a friend who said she had a bobwhite once that loved greenbeans.

Trailrunner, your home is just so beautiful and it seems to be full of who you are as a person. I don't know your story but I too have one of my own. The sentence that began "All any of us can do" really spoke to me today and I don't even know what words I can say to thank you for them. I don't mean for this to be an OT not by any means, but I try to surround myself with things that are attractive to me. The beauty might be in the character of your unupholstered chair or the unknown history of memazz's bowling pins or a painting that tells a story to me. My family doesn't understand the importance decorating has in my life, and luckily doesn't really have any influence on what I do - I couldn't imagine that battle. For me, it is the desire to surround myself with things that I find beautiful and items that evoke happy memories that dictates what I do. My rooms would not be in any magazine and pale in comparison to rooms I have seen in this blog (like your dining room) but adding something or altering a room bringing it closer to being "me" is what I strive for. Sitting in a chair in my LR, with my coffee, watching the cat as she sleeps next to "my" chair - no one else likes the color but I think it is "gorgeous" - with the colors of the vase (which I picked out just knowing that it would cast the most magnificent shadow) in the window beginning to creep upon her fur is more beautiful than any diamond I could own. So again, without meaning for this to be OT - I tend to look at people's rooms as more than what is "correct" as to how much of their personality is there. So many of your pieces from the stories you have told seem to tell some of the stories of your life. Do you like I, place what may be to most people, a greater desire to surround yourself with things that elicit positive thoughts. I find that not many people understand that it is more than just accumulating or matching "things". How much does ingesting your personality matter when you are designing a room?