Rickey, I think it was Billy J. because the cougar travels from our property onto his, through his woodland that separates us, and then gets his cats. The other Billy lives a half-mile north of me and his house is set back about 1/2 mile from the road---he is fairly new here and you likely wouldn't notice his place unless you noticed the green mailbox by the gate. He lives between the big new house west of J. road and the houses that face Old Burkhart. He stopped by the garden a few weeks ago and told me something was killing some of his chickens, and he'd seen a pit bull around and wanted me to watch out for the pit. I told him to watch out for the cougars, as I'd recently had the June cougar encounter. By the way, it is his property that they were seen crossing the other day, and that surprises me because he has several dogs. Unfortunately, none of his dogs are very large. I hope they're all OK. Keep an eye on your chihuahuas! The cougar I ran into along my garden fence the other day was walking along very slowly and stealthily, looking from side to side, and clearly hunting. It blended in really well with the dry grass so your little dogs might not notice it....and it absolutely did not make a sound walking through the tall grass. (We've since cut the grass back to stubble. I mean absolute stubble so a cougar cannot sneak up on us. First we mowed the grass as short as we could, and then I cut what was left with the weedeater.) I am about to go out to the garden to pick some more peppers to add to what I harvested this morning so I can finish the jalapeno bread and butter pickles. When I was out at this time yesterday, the rooster in the trap was having a crowing contest with my roosters. Of course, I didn't know it was a rooster in a trap, and was wondering why they suddenly had a rooster when they've never had chickens at all since we moved here. : ) So, if all is quiet when I go out in a few minutes, then maybe that is a good sign for us and a bad sign for the cougar. You probably did see a cougar's tail crossing into Fred's pasture. His neighbor that lives on the property kind of behind him has lost 12 or 13 chickens this year, and all but one disappeared without a trace. Fred has seen cougars in the past, although usually when he told me about them, he'd seen them at the old home place on the river west of Allen Rd. Back later after I finish all the pepper processing. Dawn

LOL i agree with you EG and when i look at tabor, alot of times yes, don't get me wrong, i don't complain, that boy is my pride and joy!! i am so very proud of him, but sometimes i get very grumpy with the fact that he'd rather just ask and not try to figure out how to do something, its not the asking, mind you, its the him wanting to get me to do it for him, but if its for his grandparents, he's all over it. and he'll do his very best, no asking, in fact he'll go ahead and put his best foot forward. other times, that boy will do the same here. but it's getting his but in gear!! LOL i think he developed add from me!! LOL IMHO parents don't make their kids do their chores like in our day's. befor we even could go and play with anyone or they could come to our house, chores HAD to be done, nowadays, who's doing the chores? if the parents aren't its the "help" if your in the good bracket. here i make mine do their chores. although i'm not that good on the great end of better get it done, i'm a wimp. **sigh** they have me wrapped at times, its those brown eyes, or their smiles. LOL but we don't do the tv thing and the game thing, its a no go here. although they do like to watch movies, i like the scary ones, but only so much of them. (movies) if its hot out or rainy and such. angela, i think why you do that is the same reason i used to keep my kids in, the same "thing" we have in common. we watch our kids like hawks!! but i've learned to let them know how to judge a little. i knew to judge, my mom just NEVER listened to me. talla is a great judge of character. she just don't like adults very much!! LOL ummm i can't really blame her. (sorry) i don't either. i like either young kids, or older adults. i guess you could say, almost in a childs mind, safe people. but as we all know they're are no "safe" people. onto another subject. LOL today was the fair day. kids all over. people grilling. people roasting hogs, turkey's LOL it was neat. i even got out to meet a few people. i don't usually do that that much. the heat was a little overwhelming. its now dark out and tabor is still out there, although with his one friend and i'm getting a little freaked. hubs just left for work and has called me to see if tabor is back yet. we both are the same with the kids. we had taco salad suprems. yummy. and tabor took his bread down to the fair building last night and he won 1st place. it looked awesome. so next year we are taking our tomato/potato down and talla can take her flowers down. she grows pretty flowers. so they BOTH will have something in. ~Medo

Seeking advice--remember that the wax had to be stripped from those floors too! What a miserable job! My mom obsessed about her kitchen and house--it was perfect. It always reminded me of the I Love Lucy episode where Lucy is trying to join a women's club and one of the admission requirements is a surprise inpsection of Lucy's home with the inspection team performing the "white glove" test. My mom's house was always ready for the white glove test! And my Mom had stainless steel appliances that were always spotless and shiny--I don't ever remember her having a finger print problem even with 3 kids, which is why I'm getting them now. But in retrospect they probably were a lot of work and she probably polished them every day. jfroelo--There are still a lot of people like your grandparents' generation out there, you just don't know them because in our society the classes tend to be divided by education as well as income. I'm from a rural area where these divisions do not exist as much and where small, unpretentious homes are still the norm and where the auto mechanic is as likely to live next to a doctor as he/she is to live next door to a sanitation worker. It's hard to tell who is rich and who is poor in my home town, although the bigger homes (not huge or KO like you read about on this forum) are starting to creep in. I'm a professional, but my first job when I was 10 or 11 was picking cucumbers for a farmer--no migrants or minorities in our rural area, just local kids and adults making extra money--also you don't get paid by the hour for doing that kind of work, you get paid by what you pick (i.e., per bushel, per pound, per pound for specific grades of a vegetable, etc.--so the harder you work, the more make). I also picked apples and strawberries for money as well as cleaned houses and did lots of other menial things which, in many rural areas, are done by whites at the same low rates that would be paid to illegal aliens and migrant workers in areas that have them. My brothers, who are both now professionals too, worked on farms from the time they were 12 and also did all sorts of menial jobs on the side like catching chickens that were ready to be processed, hoeing tobacco, etc. Personally I don't think it's the pay as much as I think there is a real snobbery on the part of people in some parts of the country today not wanting themselves or their kids to do jobs that migrants and illegal aliens will do. In my hometown, doing farm work, etc., and other physical labor jobs like the ones I listed were what motivated many kids to do well in school so that they could go to college, etc.,--they didn't want to work that hard for a living. And in my hometown, just about everyone has done that kind of work at some point in their lives so they don't look down on the people who are doing it now.

Hey, Kim, is that Deuterochonia brevifolia? I got one of those a few years ago at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden (they have extremely reasonable prices), after seeing an old plant of it there, of course. Not hard to grow (I keep mine dry in winter), but not fast -- steady as it goes. Love the bright green flowers and its texture and sculptural character. No such regulations here in Livermore, either for fire resistance or drought tolerance, but the city did offer incentives for people to convert at least part of their lawns to water-thrifty landscape during the last drought, and people are doing that on their own after the last water rate hikes, anyway. As we are only surrounded by semi-arid grassland, for miles, not woodland, forest, or chaparral, I don't think our city would contemplate regulations like that.