Pattico, I vote to keep it up and use it for seasonal displays. It sure made a great backdrop for the photos. Send updated pics.Thanks for sharing. I have some old weathered picket fencing that I use for my flower bed. I have more and I think I am going to copy your idea.LOL Pat P

Sorry to hear that. Mice are so annoying, more so when the cat becomes annoying trying to get the mouse. Where I used to live, we kept getting mice, twice they got into the toaster. The first one was easy to get rid of, dump the toaster upside down over a plastic container and release mouse into park. The second one would not leave. We took the toaster outside and I tried to annoy him into leaving by poking him with a leaf. Nope, just clamped on tighter. Only when I took the toaster apart did he finally realize that we could get him. He took off, little mousie butt bouncing away... I could still see him running even from a surprising distance away. That was one mouse that wasn't coming back. My worst mouse story does involve my cat, however. We had this stubborn rodent that didn't care for peanut butter, evaded my cat, and was just smarter than the avg mouse. Well, one day, we noticed the house smelled... off. Couldn't figure out what it was. The next day, it smelled bad. Still couldn't figure out what it was. I decided to sniff it out, narrowed it down to a bedroom, and randomly decided to lift the corner of the rug. You guessed it, squished mouse. In hindsight, I noticed that the cat, who normally sleeps on that corner of the rug, had been sleeping on the other side of the rug, and studiously avoiding that corner, while pretending nothing was wrong. She had chased the mouse under the rug, sat on it to keep it from escaping, and smothered it, basically did the cat version of "whoops!", and proceeded to act 'normal', all while we unknowingly continued to walk on said rug... It's funny in retrospect, but not whilst cleaning that up. Luckily, she had chased it under both the rug and rug pad, so the $300 rug was not ruined, only the much cheaper rug pad.

Ciao Martin, Not really, my figs are not bare yet. Everyday about 3 or 4 ripen, I usually go out in the early morning and pick those and eat them right away. There are new figs popping out of the branches. I don't know how these will fare or if they will ripen, but I have about 2 dozen yet that will probably ripe before the end of the year. Last night we went to 46 degrees, I had to bring my Bougainvillea in and set them in their winter positions upstairs in a warm bright unused bedroom. Fall is coming quickly, I heard of a frost warning last night in Upstate New York. Yuck!!! don't like this. Also brought in my Carob tree and my Caper bushes. What alot of work. Oleander and It Jasmine will come in next. My Geraniums can stay out a couple more weeks, but then they'll have to come in soon too. Ciao Maggie

I think a lot of possibilities have been brought up and I wouldn't know how you could narrow it down. I just hope it doesn't happen again. You mentioned watery diarrhea. My son is allergic to peanuts and his reactions have been gastrointestinal. I didn't know he was reacting at the time but in hindsight, after learning a few things about allergic reactions, I should have been tipped off because of the consistency of the vomit and diarrhea. It was very liquidy. At the time, I couldn't understand where it was all coming from since usually a child will only vomit what he has in his stomach but in an allergic reaction, your body keeps producing more of something (histamines???) and this is what was coming out of Nick. So based on the timing and the consistency of the diarrhea, I don't think you can rule out some type of allergic reaction.