Would'nt it be dull if we could not learn something new every day?

Does anyone else find this book hard to read? While the first chapter or two held my interest. I found that he digresses a bit to much for my taste. I like more of a story line. Maybe my problem was sticking with it. Not usually a problem for me. The type in my copy is small and hard for me to read for long. My eyes get tired, so I have trouble picking it up again. I will finish it but may not keep up with you all. Except for a couple of short peroids while I was growing up, we have always lived in rural areas. The yards never amounted to much. Maybe a few shrubs and fruit trees. A vegetable garden most of the time due to necessity. My paternal grandmother lived with us from the time I was nine and she did the gardening, and picked wild blackeberries for perserves and pies. My dad was an over the road trucker and wasn't home much. My mother was leagally blind and though she tried to have a few flowers it didn't amount to much. I did have to help in the vegie garden and a couple of my uncles had a large scale strawberry patch that a couple of my cousins, myself and a friend were payed a small sum for helping to weed and pick. We always managed to have a little fun there. I didn't do much with the yard in our first house. To busy with three little ones. Once we moved to the place before this one and all the kids were in school I started with a small vegie garden and strawberry patch. We always had horses around so had plenty of good fertilizer. There was a steep bank in front of the house that I worked with over the years. Strawberries did well there then I started adding the flowers. Mostly simple annuals at first and then started adding perennials. The neighbors always commented on how nice it looked and how much time I spent out there.LOL. As that area started to develope to the point it wasn't safe to ride the horses there. We longed for more privacy and space. We certainly lucked into finding this place. Fifty two acres mostly wooded. About eighteen acres of pasture, but that is down a steep hill and across one of the creeks. It was hard to even pick a spot to build the house since everything was pretty overgrown. I finally looked for a spot with the biggest trees nearby. The property had been logged and there weren't a lot of big trees. But I found and area that did have and is near the center of the property. Cedars were abundant, but so were dogwoods. Needless to say the earth is not good. A hard packed sandy clay. I have had to incorporate a lot of organic matter. Lucky for me their is an large animal humane society nearby. Lots of bedding and manure. Anyway I have managed to have a vegetable garden and several flower beds. The vegetable garden keeps shrinking. But lo and behold DH was browsing a garden catalog the other day and says he is ready to plant more things. I doubt that it will happen this year but as soon as he retires more power to him. He can sit out there and keep the squirrels from carrying off all the tomatoes. Heck they don't even carry them off. They just take a bite out of them and drop them. grrrr Yes the woods will readily encroach on everything you clear if it gets half a chance. There are several old foundations of log houses on the property. One had a rock walled cellar. There is even a tree growing in that. The whole area is overgrown with vinca. Very pretty in spring when in bloom but quite invasive. I mow paths through it and around it trying to keep it contained. The creeks had no crossings when we bought the property. Luckily DH had access to heavy equipment. He had to redo the crossings many times as the power of nature took them out with heavy rains. He has widen them enough now that they can carry most of the water without to much damage. But its one of the first things I go check after heavy rains. Well I didn't mean to write a book. I am going to make an effort to read a couple more chapters of this one. I know there is some good stories in there yet. Norma

I LOVE this show. I've watched this show from the very first season it aired. Anyway, Christian is totally FIERCE! He's very talented and always amazes me with his creativity. Chris (I think that's the name of the chubby guy) - always suprises me with his designs, too. Just when you think he's gone too dramatic in his designs, he somehow manages to pull it all together. Sweet Pea's last outfit was terrible. Sorry. I just knew she was going to be booted off. As for Ricky, OMG, talk about drama! Every episode he was crying about something or another. I liked that he was close to his Mom, but that last design - a swimsuit - was awful. I liked his design with the jeans. Very sharp. I'm really rooting for Jillian. I just hope she can pull it altogether. Her little snips with Christian are hilarious - again, he's so FIERCE - but he's also, a little DIVA!! He's just so arrogant, but he cracks me up all the time with his plugs about how wonderful he is! I like Rami too, but enough of the draping. OK, we get it - he's really good at doing this, but its too predictable. He's going to have to design outside his comfort zone if he expects to win. Anyway, I love Tim, too with his motto, "Make it work". Too funny. Can't wait to see the finale.

Sandy, A comment semi jokingly about him crusin' for a bruisin' got our delivery drivers attention. After that if he tried to deliver a package and nobody was home, especially one from another country, he'd come back in the evening on his own time in his own vehicle to bring it to us. He'd always get invited in for refreshments, sometimes stay for dinner, and always wanted to see our livestock in progress. Ended up becoming a lep lover too, and a friend that we took on a few field trips with us to get him started before we moved. Hips, knees, wrists, etc... your getting old girl. ;) As always hope it goes well getting the repairs done. You've still got a lot of leps to do. I have seen a few more Lycaeiidae, Heperiidae and another Vanessa is all, no more strays. But after that last squall it has turned relatively hot again with not a breath of fresh air or any clouds. Even so, this is also my favorite time of the year here... not for leps, but because we are starting to cool off for the season and will soon be enjoying a long, cooler fall/winter with just about ideal temps. You can dress for the cold when seldom needed here, but even in Vegas walking around nude in the heat is frowned on if you are over 25. LOL Elisabeth, Everyplace has a lot of wonderful species to explore, and some of my favorites places in this country are in the midwest and east. Luckily I was able to travel for leps wherever I wanted to experience species not found where I lived. For those of you east of the slopes of the Rockies there are many, many species out west that would be new for you, and with the wide open spaces that are almost all public lands out here they are easy to "go find". There are lots of specific places here that are meccas for a lot of species too, both flora and fauna. The different habitats and landscapes make for a great trip, just like some of those back east were for me the first time I visited them. Great scenery, new species and nice people no matter where you travel is always a winner. All it takes is realigning priorities to be able to do it to whatever level works for you. Our family vacations always included some lep time even if not specifically taken for leps. We couldn't even lay on some far away beach for long before we'd all be exploring the species in tide pools or snokeling (from my marine biology days) or looking for life in the dune flora. Even staying in some hotel or resrot in a big city offered some time to look around the landscaping or immediate area. I've had a lot of strange stares in my life by walking around cities with a butterfly net. LOL Exploring nature was just too enjoyable for all of us to ignore a new opportunity with the possibility of discovering something new. Larry