First of all, you will get used to the noise. I'd visit Mom in FL whose house was a half mile away from the train tracks and the first day, I'd hear every train, but after that, hardly ever. Second, I think you need to get to know your neighbors...sounds like they are friendly types which is a good thing. I grew up in the country surrounded by lots and lots of land and few children because there were few houses. When I married and moved to an acre lot, it was terrible for awhile....all the traffic, the kids, the dogs, the mowers... Then I got to know my neighbors. And trust me, the chain saw isn't so loud when it's good neighbor Tim doing the sawing and you don't mind asking John if he could not mow on Saturday as you're planning on a memorial service for your Dad with lots of people coming.... And neighbors can be a great help, like when your snow blower breaks or when you need someone to feed the cat. I know our neighbor was glad for us when the house next to her's caught fire and the firemen wouldn't let her go home that night, so she spent the night with us. Every lifestyle has it's plusses and minuses. Change your perspective, seek the good, and then see where you're at. You may be surprised. BTW, we are now back home on 11 acres, but the area is so much more built up than when I was a kid. Even on our 11 acres though, I know when Bill is sawing or Jimmy is running his back hoe or when Norma is out mowing, or when Jessica's kids are playing with their dog. It's comforting.

Yes, we did also consider American (in addition to Electrolux, Wolf, Thermador, BlueStar, Five Star...) but, ultimately, we decided to go with the Capital Precision range based on reviews, cost, looks, functionality. I felt like I could be happy with any of the brands mentioned so we took this decision very seriously :)

Karen, I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to this. I'm still recovering from our month on the road! We do what you do. Since I am allergic to garlic, this is my DH's substitute. He is Polish on his mother's side, grandparents came from Poland, so he grew up on it. He'll put it on or in a lot of what he eats. We've even had it in mashed potatoes. I don't like it, so I don't eat it. DS started putting it in deviled eggs. I also make DH's salad dressing. It's a honey mustard that I got somewhere on line, and I add horseraddish to that. Honey Mustard Salad Dressing 1/4 c cider vinegar 1/2 c oil 1 1/2 T. mustard 1 1/2 T. honey 1 t. oregano 1 T. Parmesan cheese I add about 1 heaping teasp. horseraddish to it. No horseraddish recipes from the street fair tho. Sorry. We went to see my Aunt on Sunday. There wasn't any of Grandpa's old plants to be found. It would have been nice to have, but that's the way it goes. Tami

Grrr. I am irritated. Have typed a long, rambling answer twice and lost it twice. So here's my final attempt for tonight. Tim is still very sick. I am beginning to understand what a violent stomach virus the norovirus is....it gives new meaning to the word projectile. If the rest of us manage to escape all the germs he is spewing into the universe, it will be an absolute miracle, and not a miracle I'm expecting will occur. The four year old granddaughter was lucky---she left for her dad's house and an out-of-state vacation the same day Tim came home sick, so she might be spared. The rest of us probably won't be. This weather.....this is what Oklahoma does. What is pretty much guaranteed is that the weather each year will find a way to be very different from the previous year's weather....so, after three relatively nice, warm Februaries, we are having a cold one....with March seeming like it will start out the same way. It is what it is and we just have to deal with it. Our erratic late winter and early spring weather is why Oklahoma isn't known for having a huge commercial fruit-growing industry---because such as industry would go broke here. Blueberries are extremely difficult to grow successfully. I grew them in Texas and was smart enough to never attempt them here as I have highly alkaline soil and highly alkaline water, slow-draining clay and frequent summer dry spells with tons of heat and little to no rainfall. What do blueberries need? A very specific acidic soil in a very specific pH range, and if you can create that, you also need to have neutral to acidic water that isn't working against you. If you have alkaline water, then each time you water (blueberries tend to need irrigation daily in our very hot and dry summers in southern OK), the water is making your acidic mix a bit more alkaline and it takes a toll on the plants after a couple of years. They need perfect drainage. Perfect. They are shallow-rooted and will die quickly if allowed to get too dry in the summer. They abhor wet feet and will die quickly if allowed to sit in waterlogged soil. How are you going to help them cope on one of those days when 5 or 8 or 12" of rain falls in one day? Have a plan for that! They are very prone to root rot diseases like phytopthera. People who have success with them tend to have perfect drainage and soil that is in the perfect pH range for them. When I grew them in Texas, I had them in a raised bed completely above grade so their roots never made it down into our slow-draining black gumbo clay. That bed was filled with a 50-50 mix of pine bark fines and peat moss. I watered with a soaker hose so the water went into the soil-less mix and not onto the plants. My plants got direct sun from about 8-10 a.m. and then were in dappled shade to heavy shade the rest of the day. If you grow them in containers, you may need to water with drip irrigation lines more than once a day in the hottest weather. It is hard to create a soil-less mix that drains well but also doesn't drain too well....good luck with that. Here's the OSU Fact Sheet on Growing Blueberries in the home garden. The people I know who have had the most success have lived in the NE quadrant of the state and had naturally well-draining and acidic soil. I don't know if any of them kept the plants alive for longer than maybe 5 years, and lost the plants about the time they really began to produce well. Sometimes they did get a year or two of good production from the plants before they died. Growing Blueberries in the Home Garden Megan, I'm glad your daughter is so much better and continue to pray for your uncle's continued recovery. He's had such a tough time the last few days. Your poor mom! Being sick is not fun and if you feel compelled to go into work anyway, that is just a miserable situation. Of course you are tired and low in energy today---your crazy week drained it all out of you. I hope you were able to rest and yet also to find the energy to cover up and move whatever plants needed it. I am afraid y'all are going to take a pretty hard hit from this weather up there. They have snow and/or sleet back in our forecast for tomorrow---it pops in and out of the forecast every few hours, but tonight our local TV weather guy seemed more convinced than previously that it is going to find us. I'll continue hoping it misses us. We're still going to be pretty cold for this far south. The wind chills for the whole state look horrible over the next couple of days. At least wind chills themselves do not affect plants, though cold temperatures and strong winds can be tough on our plants in these sorts of cold spells. I helped Jana and Lillie paint Lillie's room at the new house today. It looks really nice and two coats of her chosen paint color (one coat yesterday, another one today) covered up the previous paint color very well. There's a ton of prep work involved in painting these rooms because they have so much of the lovely Victoria style trim and woodwork that needs to be covered in blue painter's tape so that we don't get the wall paint on the trim. Really, by the time you can finally start painting, the painting goes much more quickly than all the prep work. After we finished that room, we worked on prepping the living room for painting...it has a total of 8 walls and I think 10 windows, 8 of which are the 84" tall windows....so lots of time was spent up on ladders, and we never even made it high enough today to cover the crown molding to protect it from the wall paint. I guess that's a project for tomorrow if we aren't iced in here at our house. My son works tomorrow, so we may take a day off and stay home unless we have to be up there at the house because an appliance is being delivered. One is scheduled, but the weather could interfere......and we all may be tired enough that we are sort of hoping it does. One thing that struck me about her room is that the only closet is the original one from 1932, and it is sort of wedge shaped in a corner, and very tiny, so it will not hold much....she is sort of in shock at the fact that her lovely room has so little built-in storage. We're looking for furniture that can store a lot of clothing.....maybe an old-fashioned armoire or wardrobe. For lunch we had a picnic sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor since no furniture has been moved into the house yet. We had our favorite Bar-B-Q from Caddo BBQ so it was the yummiest meal and was lots of fun. I spent a lot of time looking out windows at the landscape today. They have a lot of shade so that may present some landscaping challenges. Oh, and we met the lovely older couple next door....almost old enough, perhaps, to be my parents, but not quite. They are so kind and so friendly. We found some old wallpaper previously not seen when removing light switch plates and old cabinets and things. That was pretty fun...but it wasn't drastically old wallpaper....I think I remember very similar patterns from the 1980s. My tomato plants are outgrowing their light shelf and I have no desire to move them to the greenhouse yet, as that would mean setting up heaters in the greenhouse....and I just do not even want to go there.....so I'll bring in a bigger shelf tomorrow that has adjustable shelving which will allow the plants to stay under fluorescent lights for at least a couple more weeks. We still have nice weather out in the forecast around Thursday or so....knock on wood! Dawn