From I-65 (north or south) take Exit 250 to I-459 South. The signs say Tuscaloosa/Bessemer. From the interchange go about 1 mile to Exit 13, US-31 South. Get into the far left hand turn lane at the exit ramp. There is a stop light at the bottom of the off ramp. Turn left at the light and go under I-459 for 6/10ths mile. Stay in the same lane. Go through FOUR traffic lights. When you have gone through the fourth light, start looking for the left turn lane at the FIFTH traffic light. This is the US-31 and "Lorna Rd - Hwy 150" intersection. Hanging in the middle of the intersection is a green sign saying . Turn left on to Lorna Road. There are 4 cross streets on Lorna Road with a traffic light: (1) Lodge Drive (2) Data Drive (3) Centennial Drive. You will then make a big left hand curve and start down hill to the fourth cross street (4) Rocky Ridge Ranch Road. It is 9/10ths mile from Hwy 31 to Rocky Ridge Ranch Road. As soon as you have crossed Rocky Ridge Ranch Road, turn right into Aldridge Botanical Gardens. There are three aisles of parking. Drive to the garden gate and turn left, go over to the third aisle, turn let and drive back toward Lorna Rd. to the parking section which is parallel to and nearest to Lorna Road. On Thursday I will make a map of the parking lot. If you need additional instruction or a copy of the parking map, let me know and I will email a copy.

Sorry I haven't been posting but my poor little webtv won't let me on so I have to go offsite to login.Any weekend is good for me.there's plenty of parking at my place-2 acres :O).I've already started potting things but haven't updated my page yet.As for food around here the best is The Ark! Best shrimp & catfish there is.People come from all to eat there & it isn't expensive.There is also a chinese buffet,The Shack barbeque,a mexican place & several others to choose from.Anyone want more info just email me directly as that is easier for me.Hope we have a good turnout this fall.I have lots to get rid of-from tropicals to hardy to water plants! Jan

If I had to do it all over again, and know what I do now, I would recoomend the Black & Decker BV9000 Leaf Eater (at Costco for $79.00) verses buying the $300.00 Yarkworks 'chipper' for $199.00 at Cdn Tire. You can make alot more 'mulch' with leaves than you can with sticks & cones......in way less time. (and keep that little extra money to put towards that self propelled lawn monster that's on sale now at Home Depot or towards a new snow blowing machine you know you really really want and just haven't decided on which monster model you simply must have.) Costco's Black & Decker Leaf Eater comes with the attachments for blowing, vaccuming, shredding, over the shoulder bagging and added value at Costco is that it also includes the $30.00 garbage bin collection system, and an extention cord all for $79.00 - BV9000 is the model # - nice and light weight. Cdn tire sell the same machine but it is $10 more expensive and doesn't come with the extension cord and doen't include the garbage bin collection system (valued at $30.00) - (must be a promo deal with those two extras added in that is only offered at Costco) Here are the spec's: Push button release easily converts from blower to vacuum 3 Tools in 1 - Blower, Vacuum, and Mulcher Anti-clog Vortex® Vacuum System resists clogging Variable blow speed controls airflow from maximum 200MPH to 150 MPH Low Noise Design 10 to 1 mulch ratio mulches 10 bags of raked leaves into one bag of mulched leaves Reduces lawn clean-up to one simple step Deposits leaves directly into trash can No tools required I'm in love and have put my chipper in retirement as this little Black & Decker monster has shredded over 20 bags of maple leaves this afternoon - the front garden looks amazing with at least 6 inches of fine leaf mulch - haven't used the shoulder strap bagger yet because I've been having way too much fun using the 'leaf collection system' to put the pulverized leaves into - then running out to dump the garbage bins into the front gardens - more fun than I should be allowed! I'm going on a 'leaf hunt' tomorrow at the neighbours because I've vaccumed up and mulched every twig & leaf in my yard.......

Heather, I just happened to see your post about posting pictures. It's weird because I haven't been reading this thread except for the day after it was initiated and for some reason I just figured I'd click on it and skim quickly through. Anyway, here's how to post pictures.... One of the easiest ways to provide your photo to be embedded into a post is to upload it onto an image hosting site such as Photobucket, Flickr, etc. That should be pretty straight forward, and the individual sites will give instructions on how to get your photos uploaded to their site when you sign up. Once your picture has been uploaded, find its image location address (URL) by right clicking on the image and copying the image location. Some sites may even provide the appropriate HTML code in a text box below the photo for your convenience. It will be the one that begins with a href=... Let's say, as an example, that the address of the picture you want to post is http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg To embed the picture into a post, use the command: img src="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg"> _____________________________________ If your picture is too large to fit nicely into the text page, you can add a width attribute. The command with the width attribute would look something like: img src="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg" width=600> _____________________________________ Another option is to use a text link which might be beneficial to people on slow connections. To do this, use the command: a href="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg">your text goes here/a> _____________________________________ Note that I had to use special characters to get the commands above to show up here without turning into pictures, but you can use them as shown (with the correct image web address, of course).