Thank you Lisa for this encouraging message. I went back and looked some other pictures, ...[as some of you know these are taken by a motion sensor hooked up with camera]. The first picture above was taken first, deer noticed camera and looked, the moved a step back and looked again...this next picture. Some others..

Beautiful pic. But of course I would say that as my favorite subject matter is the deer! That second deer had me fooled for a minute, at first I just saw one! Looks like they spotted you and trying to figure it out. Looks like they have a regular path they follow. The snow is beautiful but I think I'm glad we are having weather in the 70's already and even reached the 80's a couple of days. Every hair on that deer shows up so sharp......love it!

This is so pretty. I think that deer in the wild are so beautiful. I have started seeing deer in our back field, close to a fence row and grove of trees. This morning I saw a female deer watching me while I walked my dogs. See probably has a fawn nearby. I was thrilled to see her. I would love to get a decent camera to take closeups. Do you have any advice as to what is easiest to use for a beginner!Thank you for sharing this lovely picture.

Yan, Glad to hear aloe is ok being a little wet...I've got an aloe x spinosissima that was nearly dead after being neglected for a year outside. I repotted it in some Miracle Gro C&S (before I knew to mix it) in a glazed pot. I want to repot it now that I'm slightly wiser about best soil substrates because I'm worried about the soil being too wet, but it has pups coming off of it every which way and seems to be doing just excellent, so I'm reluctant to uproot it before this winter. I'm really glad to hear you think pumice will be ok with turface and that pumice is great -- I had it in my head that it doesn't hold any water at all, so I was a little concerned since my climate has very low humidity in the summer. But sounds like I can adapt by maybe a twice a week watering schedule or something. Thanks! Rina, Right -- if I switch to a gritty mix, I'll abandon the C&S soil altogether. For now, I'm doing a mix, but ideally I'd like to use no soil at all. I just don't really want to buy a huge thing of turface (plus having to drive a bit to do it). I called a few farm supply stores about Dry Stall -- no luck, but one did have Stall Dry, which I was about to purchase before finding a comment (in these forums I think?) that it's actually not the same as Dry Stall, so I'm not sure now. I checked a couple of oil absorbents at Ace Hardware, but the ingredients just said "clay" and I wasn't sure if that was ok. I will try to go to Napa today or tomorrow and check for 8822 -- thanks! I won't repot it right away, so I have some time to seek out ingredients. I didn't think about grit making the hanging basket too heavy -- makes sense! I have 3 small pieces of the burrito's tail now -- 2 are in 1 container and the other is alone. I guess they are probably acclimatized to the sun by now since the sunburns don't seem to be getting worse. The only chicken grit I could find at my local store was in a small bag (3 or 5 pounds?) and was nearly $10. :-) I passed, and will have to check stores in other towns for this super cheap grit I keep reading about! Crenda, Looks like there's one of those about a 30 minute drive from me -- so thanks for the advice, I will DEFINITELY call before driving out there to check! :-)