This is the vegetable garden out back. It doesn't look like much yet but everything is planted including 20 tomato plants and brocolli seedlings, for seeds coming up: nasturtium, dill, carrot, sweet corn, cucumber, pole beans, potatos, tomatillos, two kinds of onions, garlic, and jalapeno pepper plants. Several more things to go in yet. Two herb beds out front have Greek oregano, rosemary, sage, chives, pinapple salvia, thyme, and other various things. I am in the process of moving the herbs to plant around the dog rose in the middle bed to make a knot garden and will convert the old herb beds for more vegetables. I have lots of flowers planted in the beds along the fence behind, as well as elsewhere. Thank goodness for free mulch! This is very much still a garden section that is in progress. Blueberries, almond, red buds, dogwood, and peach all planted around the garden. Going to add a bench and rose arbor to the back right behind the center knot garden later. The larger raised beds shown here are 6 feet wide by 30 feet long, double dug deeply and much amended as Georgia red clay isn't much to garden in.

I wanted to check how this tall skinny photo would show up. I noticed that all of the other pictures seemed to be resized to the same width and that the thumbnail or preview was the same size as the photo when clicked on. I liked it better when the thumbnails were small and then you could click on it to get a large photo. Anyway, this photo is one I took this week of a bromeliad in my back yard that I've had for two years, and this is the first time it has bloomed. It has two spikes, but one is much taller and bigger than the other. I had no idea what the flowers would look like, and I was a bit disappointed at first, but now I'm getting used to it, especially since the flowers seem to last quite a long time. The purple parts haven't even opened yet, and it's had spikes for a month now. It's got wicked leaves - like a very sharp saw blade - and so it is difficult to tend, but it seems impervious to pests of any kind. Lars

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Thanks! I'm kind of ambivalent about starting a thread on this.* But that's not why I posted them, I'm having tech issues. I sent these pics to my prospective builder, as jpegs in-line in an email, and they appear to him as large black blocks. When he clicks on them, nothing happens. But I can see them in my "sent" email, and when I click on them, they open in a new, larger window. And of course, all of you seem to see the pics just fine. So I don't know what's going on. I can't seem to receive any emails from him either, even though I receive other emails. I suspect my earthlink and his yahoo are having some sort of security issues with each other, but I'm still researching. * ETA: I'm not sure I'm up for a full-blown design feedback thread right now, although I surely appreciate the kind words very much. It takes a lot of energy, and at the moment all heck has suddenly broken out here at scone central. Can I say maybe later on that? And I've already promised to start another thread, although I can't remember what it was supposed to be about! Brain not work. Oooh, hang on, I just had a coherent thought for once! I'm going to send these jpegs to my DH at work, and see if he has the same problem the builder is having. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ETA: I just got an email from DH saying he thinks he's fixed it. Here's what he says, in case anyone runs into this issue: Your email problem should now be fixed. There was a configuration problem on your account – there was a forward to “loop”. My old yahoo accounts seem to have gone away so I can’t test by sending from one of those. I have also upgraded the amount of storage you get on the server so that there won’t be any problem even sending/receiving really big files. scone here. Hopefully that gets the job done. It's odd, though, because Houzz didn't have any problem with the size of these files. I have no idea what "forward to loop" means.