Weeding and resiting the planned water garden. Mom Nature knows better than me! :-) Took the rainy time to go through many books that haven't been cracked in years. The 1996 copy of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden still holds true for newly establishing gardens and got a lot of good reminders/ hints. Trying to keep annuals started from seed hardened off without rotting. An old fitted sheet over a three tier stand seems to be working well. Greenhouse lurking all over Massachusetts and northern CT for temperennials I don't yet have. Some great stuff out there in the little "local hero, locally grown" stands. Cleaning containers in anticipation of planting these new babies and cuttings I took last fall. Took out all bird feeders. This was a tough decision but I want nature to take its course and the plantings will soon replace the human provided food. Not to mention that I have sunflowers and millet sprouting EVERYWHERE! Checked with a local Ornithologist to be sure none of my feathered friends would be harmed. Looking forward to this weekend when hopefully, there will be a lot more "in the garden" to report. Martie

Thanks, Kim, for starting a new thread! I promise to not blind people on the new one! LOL I included a link below to the new thread. I sure hope you're doing better, Kim... You're still very much in my thoughts and prayers. Dorothy, I'll shoot you an email on the fonts later after I finish the file for the WOW swap. In short, for bigger font, use everything between the quotes, but replace the two quote symbols with a ""font size=4>Type whatever you want in here between the HTML codes."/font> If this isn't clear, I'll send more later by email.... I hope I don't forget... If I do, just email me! LOL Blessings, Angela

Where do I start? Yes I am very busy. The weekend was a HUGE success. We have to have one girls! I cannot wait to have one with all of us. I have just been friends with these ladies since Aug. & have met 4 of them. I have only met 2 of you IRL. Yes, I've talked to many more over the phone & seen many pics but then I've seen many pics of my other friends too. Especially since it is scrapbooking. LOL We did some shopping, went out to eat, let the kiddos swim at the waterpark, took lots of pics, did a little sleeping, and generally enjoyed each other's company. Dave came & spent a little time on Sunday too. He already knew 2 of the women so he met the 3rd one. This is a busy month of birthdays for us. So I've been busy doing birthday cards, pages about our adventures, sympathy cards, Mother's Day cards, and such. We've had trips to the commissary, VA, & tomorrow the Renaissance Fair on top of visiting the friend who had his cancer surgery & is in the hospital. We had the resident's association meeting, quilting show, shopping with the girls, & I'm organizing still. So that's been my week. Milkdud~[[[[Larry]]]] Hope you get good news. Glad you are staying so busy & that you are enjoying TOPS so much. My Mom's sis did that with great success for a while. NH Suzanne~Love hearing about the BB. We have had so many birds here this winter. I thought perhaps it was b/c we are so much colder than normal. Many, many more nests it has seemed to us. This would be the ______ in particular that I'm speaking of. If I don't think of it, I'll have to ask Dave what I'm trying to think of. He is off doing clothes right now. BJ~I hope you enjoy your time off the island & that you have better luck with the house this time. Can't wait to hear about Baby V. Little Sweetie Pie deserves to have a good home. Raeanne~The art show sounds divine. I can't wait to see the pics. I know Dave will be interested too especially since it is the Adironack chairs. Wodka~I'm thrilled you are going to Chicago. I've only been in the airport. It was cold. LOL I had to do a 4 hour layover from Orlando to Dallas. IDK, doesn't make sense to me? I know it is a little late but I always take out the honey, lemon, & tea when my throat is hurting. That seems to take care of it right away. Besh~Glad Zoe is doing well. Shopping, yes!! Fun, fun, fun. Well, I hope you have a great weekend. My friend is supposed to take pics of her friend having a baby & she is being checked by the dr so we may have to wait until Sunday to go to the Ren Fest but whenever we go, it will be a great time. Have a good one! Patti :-) Gretchen~I never did hear back from you so should I gather that you decided not to be part of the un-birthday group?

I’m starting to think the herd of “animals” might have been females and adolescents! I definitely know what deer look like, and they’re way too big and don’t look really at all like what I saw. I don’t believe elk were ever that far east—in “modern times” at least—and they definitely weren’t elk anyway, not even females or young ones. The main thing that was so absolutely amazing about “these things” is the way the BOUNDED around—almost as if their “toes” weren’t even touching the ground! They almost looked like they were “floating up and down” they moved so easily across the ground! But because of that I think possibly they “looked smaller” than they really were! They MUST have been female/young antelope! And—Centennial didn’t exist when I lived down thataway! Parker Road was 2-lane too, and there was a stop sign at the intersection of Parker and Arapahoe! And Tagawa was the ONLY thing on the west side of Parker! ALL the rest of the land was Richlawn Turf Farm growing fields! (470 had just been opened and was still free when I was moving away from there!) I don’t even recognize the area when I occasionally get down there—get lost after living there for more than fifteen years! (Smoky Hill was built up already back then—pretty new subdivisions, but all houses already!) (I think Broncos at Dove Valley was just being built when I left!) Love your story about pointing out of a parked Wildlife Viewing Car!” He would have gotten me! [When I was a “kid” I was at the local movie with a friend—it was a horror movie called The Tingler, and we were sitting thru it a second time—theater was the only place that was cool in summer! It really was a dumb movie—the “evil thing” that was supposed to “scare” you looked like a strip of fake fur being pulled around on a piece of thread—and it wasn’t scary at all. Everybody else was screaming “at the appropriate times,” and we couldn’t figure out why! So we decided that we were both going to scream at a time when we knew nothing at all “scary” was gonna be happening! We did, and everybody else in the theater screamed too! We thought it was pretty funny—but then we got a “talking to” by the usher! It was still funny!] Another story! The first time (since 1949) that I went up to Yellowstone, 2006, I went in the east gate, and, less than a mile into the Park the cars were all stopped in the road. I was close enough to the ”front of the line” to be able to see the buffalo! Got out and started walking closer and there were a couple hundred buffalo grazing on both sides of the road—and roaming this way and that all over the road. We were parked there for a half an hour, and by then there were cars parked as far as you could see in both directions—everywhere—and just about as many people out of their cars as there were buffalo! (Yeah! Some folks were WAY too close!) We were all talking—the one couple I was talking to was from New York! I have NEVER seen so many people that were SO happy to be in a Traffic Jam! (And I think maybe putting a few buffalo here and there along the Interstates might be the perfect cure for Road Rage!) I went back in ’12—to see the buffalo again, and to see the “terraces” by the north entrance which had had way too many people in ’06! In 2012 there were virtually NO buffalo (near the roads), and the Terraces had “dried up” during the intervening years—but the people were still there! Yeah, I know you don’t see all those birds/animals in your yard—but you are SO lucky, first, to “work” somewhere where you have so much opportunity for wildlife viewing, and then to live where there’s still so much “open land” left—and closer to the foothills! The few birds I named above are pretty much all I EVER get up here—in my yard! And, instead of increasing in summer, for me I pretty much see the same ones! Usually get a few goldfinches in summer, plus some hummers, but then I normally lose most/all of the flickers and downies over summer—and rarely see a Junco in summer! Right now I’m trying to figure out a—possibly—new one I’m seeing! Maybe 6 weeks ago I saw small birds hanging onto the suet cages. My first impression, because of the basic shape, was that they were Juncos, but Juncos aren’t usually “clingers,” and after the first couple brief times I saw them I realized that they looked smaller than Juncos, and not as “roly-poly.” One time I had at least a dozen of them on the two cages! Some were back again today, and now I’m considering the possibility that they’re peewees! The head doesn’t look as “square” as peewees look in most of the pics, but I think that might be what they are! Boy! The illustrations/pics in my (FOUR) bird books sure do make them look different! Googled them and some of what I found look like what I have—and some don’t! Final decision still pending! By the way, on the “log” that I re-drilled to hang horizontally, I filled two little “dishes” on top with broken up nuts and the mealworms I bought, and also filled some of the holes on the sides with peanut butter. I HAVE seen a downy eating the peanut butter a few times, and this morning I saw a chickadee eating some of the nuts! The nuts and worms ARE getting gone, but I’m not seeing who’s eating them—could be blackbirds (which came back today!), so I’m not putting much out till I know for sure if some of the “good” birds (pardon my prejudice!) are getting the nuts and worms or not! With the mealworms I’m pretty surprised I haven’t seen any of the flickers or downies getting some of them! Did you see the recent (month ago?) PBS program about coywolves! Really interesting—I thought! Skybird