Oh, sure calamity, just make me want to tear my path out and change it to look like that one, lol. That's really nice. Thanks for posting it. The pool demo contractor hands out photos of the pool with the poem written in it and thinks it's really funny. I went out with a can of spray paint the night before they started and found out that I'll never pass as a graffiti artist. Next, I found out that it was really hard to take a photo of the whole poem because the pool was L shaped. Duh! It rained for 6 solid hours here on Friday night. Sure glad I kept the pump. I started it up as soon as there was enough water to pump and left it on through the whole storm. The back yard is currently lower than the sidewalk, so the water has nowhere to go. The deck drains are also gone, so the slope now drains directly into the flat part of the yard. That will be fixed as the work continues. It's raining again today, but not nearly as much. The sun will return tomorrow. Linda

I am glad I provided some humor for you. Just this morning, we unloaded about 5 ton of granite boulders and placed them on our "mountain." Now that the handcart is beefed up, it makes moving these boulders a lot easier than you would think. We had to build a trail (that we were going to build anyway, btw) ahead of time just in order to be able to move the boulders into place. We also had to put boulders into place just to keep the 50 or so Knockout roses from floating down the mountain. Those pumps are scary looking. I am guessing that each one of those babies is going to use $50 a month in electricity. 9000 gph and they can push the water 60 feet vertically. I blew the rear end out of the Ford F-150 the last go around driving 300 miles to get concrete pond molds. Each waterfall will have a series of drops with 3 small ponds. We will be building them inside the garage this winter. With all of the excavation and ponds and mountains and gigantic boulders, our formerly "huge" place is getting to feel smaller and smaller. We will eventually stop when we run out of room. I have been eyeing the vacant lot across the street and wondering if the county would let me "connect" my property to it with some sort of wooden pedestrian bridge across the street.

Thank you everybody! The camera I use is a Sony Mavica MVC CD-400, given to me and my BF from his mom, it's an older camera at only 4 mega pixel, but I've learned to use it a little better this year, taking lots of pictures of my flowers, especially the daylilies. I use the micro setting on it for all my close-up shots of my flowers. Sometimes I have real steady hands for getting the close-ups really good, other times I'm shaky. Then I touch up the photos a bit in Picasa to get them looking a little more clear and try to get the colors more true, though it doesn't always work. This picture however the camera picked up the colors perfectly with very little touching up. I think I like taking pictures of the flowers as much as growing them! Karen

How old is this man? Knowing that might help to understand his reluctance. You are doing the right thing. My DM had a little saying for situations like this: Anything to keep peace in the family. I'll never forget that. In my case, we always had "everybody" for holiday dinners at our house, including newcomers to our church. Now that even the grand children are married and that means other families in the picture, and my DH passed many years ago, holidays aren't what they used to be. But I go with the flow, or else I would be left stranded, all alone. Thanksgiving will be at my DGD's. She is a great cook, (although my dressing is better than hers!) I still have Christmas here, and all the family understands that. No ifs and or buts. Sue