A forest will choke out a thicket, I often recomend that fruit and nut trees be planted on purpose, so that we lock up carbon and produce food for ourselves, and chocke out the brush plants that are unpleasent to walk through. When you go on a hike along a tail it seems that you are always either bordered by clearing/lawn or by a thicket, but once you break through that thicket you can useually travle quite quickly and easily and have plenty of space to move about. The main reasonfor removing trees and brush historicly wasn't to make things more pleasent, it was to open up land for agricultural use. with a field we can grow staple cerial grains, or legumes, or use it as pasture for animals, while some trees may provide seasonal food for some critters it takes alot of work to survive off of them year round (and trust me when I say thing, willow does not taste that good) . Our modenr day lawns were not contrived from thin air, you need to look at were they came from to understand how they fit in. Lawns are popular mainly in the south (sure, lots of people like them, but in the south they are sick for them) the south had a large portion of its caucasian inhabitants come from scotland (the southern drawl is very closely related to the scots accent) in schotland they have huge green field that are kept down to a few inches all summer long, this is because there is alot of rain and people raise sheep. Now, in the south there isn't as much water in the summer, and there aren't as many sheep, but people still liked the look of home so a lawn with mowers and irrigation is what they came up with.

It's actually the whole floor "unit" going boingy-boing, almost like a trampoline. The joist spacing is 16" OC, give or take a tad, we can tell that upstairs by the pattern of cracks in the LR ceiling that very neatly follow the joists and crossing thingies between them! *wry grin* The joist span is not unreasonable, the joists we can see down cellar are nice big solid boards, no sign of termite or powderpost beetle, to the best of our knowledge they weren't chopped up to run plumbing or heating ducts. The floors themselves are actually almost 1 1/2" thick on the first floor - 3/4" pine board subfloor and 3/4" pine "decorative" floor (real 3/4", too, not this "nominal" crap! LOL) - the second floor has only the the 3/4" board subfloor. I plan on bringing in an engineer to look at it next year and we'd start with the least-invasive action first, which would probably be more footers and lally columns. (There's no bulkhead, so everything coming in or going out will have to go through the kitchen, what grand fun! Not.) What's aggravating is that we didn't really notice the bounce until we got furniture in and dishes in the cupboards and the rattle-bang started up, it would have been a strike against the house as would a dozen other things our home inspector (who has a good reputation around here and is supposedly clueful about old houses, we wonder if he just had an off day or what?) missed. Yeah, we've got some exterior biggies too so I sympathize, including driveway paving, although we have to start from scratch - we don't have one at all! That was supposed to have happened this fall but the buyer for the other house fell through and now we've taken a $20k price cut trying to just get the damn thing sold, so we'll be following the example of previous owners/renters and parking on the lawn when we're under snow ban. Trashy but better than getting towed. *eyeroll* That $20k was supposed to be the driveway and the bathroom, along with part of ripping out the new-but-still-horrible carpet upstairs. We had had dreams of this nice little parking area done up with those pretty brick-look pavers with a front sidewalk to match, so period-perfect you could barf, but unless we win the lottery I think it's just going to be your basic asphalt splotch. :-( Tree work is on our agenda too, some of it HAS to be done next month to prevent damage to the house from winter storms but hopefully the rest can be put off for a few years. There's one tree in the yard that we call the "grandfather tree" that's easily 6 feet in diameter that I want to have looked at so we know what needs to be done to keep it healthy, because it looks like another similarly sized tree came down in the last decade or so although thankfully it went across the gully behind the house and not on top of it!

I'm in SCOTLAND in the UK so I wouldn't dare put my precious hot chillies outside!!!!!! there's a well known saying in Scotland we get 4seasons in one day only yesterday in the west coast of Scotland where I live we had HAILSTONES!! and now today it's freezing cold with some sunny spells with a couple of heavy rain shower thrown in for good measure our weather is rubbish every year in Scotland we are all pale blue skin wich is the norm ha ha lol cos it's always freezing TG

The title of this thread caught my attention, and I skipped down to comment because I hate the word 'boobs' for breasts too. Maybe because to me, the word has always meant a stupid, clownish person?