That's great! Love positive messages. I got their hardy amaryllis group in spring 2003. They are still going strong. c

I had not thought to check Memo's blog. The fate of little calves whose Moomas for some reason do not feed them first off is one reason we got out of the cattle biz. Memo makes the telling more interesting than I ever could. I'm sorry she's not able to continue the blog, but it's good to hear she's able to keep busy with needlework. Thanks for doing this, Rainey. Memo, I hope have some good days where you feel like a very short 'Hello' post to surprise those of us who subscribe to your site. Nell

Jay, the coldframe is very temporary and a little embarassing. My DH built the raised box for me and we have intentions of putting a real cover on it probably with plexiglass panels. The bed is 4x12 and the clear stuff is 12 feet by 26 inches I think. Since it is about $30 a sheet, I wanted to make sure it was what I wanted before I fixed it plus I just got busy on other things. The part on top doesn't fit the bed and is something I made to use on the ground. The metal part is one of those small indoor exercise trampolines that we just cut in half. We left the legs on and the PVC pipe just slides over the leg to hold it in place. The center is just 1/2 inch PVC looped over to help hold the bigger PVC pipe in place because it isn't rigid enough. The plastic is a piece of 6 ml construction plastic left over from another job but it will last as long as the lettuce. The PVC is only 10 feet long so there is a board holding the tramp curve at the 10 foot point and there's another 2 feet of bed not under the hoop. So you see, it is a totally temp project made with left-overs and is not wide enough or long enough for the bed. I built a high tunnel at my old house using the same principles though. I had a full size tramp frame that I used for the end hoops then bolted 10 foot aluminum pipe to the small projections that come out from the frame and fit down into the legs of the tramp. We built a frame on the ground with landscape timber which was held in place with rebar. Then we drilled holes using a door knob cutter in the landscape timber and set the ends of the arch into them. This held everything together and made it sturdy. At this point you have 2 metal arches and four aluminum pipes which make the structure. Then you can use thin PVC to go across every 4 feet or so. I could see this in my head and my DH and son just couldn't understand what I was talking about. I remember taking them outside and putting two tramp pieces together and lifting the arch over my head. LOL As soon as I lifted it up and there was plenty of room to walk under it they understood and helped me build it. I set it over my garden area, but still had to bring in the good stuff to improve the soil. I had built it over one raised bed that had tomatoes in it, but all the rest of it was just planted in the ground. Lessons learned. 10 x 13 was not large enough and I could just have easily used longer pipe or connected two 10s together to give me a 20 foot length because the metal made it strong enough. The natural way that the tramp fits together (without cutting) gives you two side rails a few feet off the ground, then two top rails overhead. I needed to add another support at the exact center to force all of the water to run off. This would be easy to do, but I just didn't realize the need until I lived with it through some heavy rains. If I do it again, I will probably build a permanent structure on the bottom and start the arch at a higher point. Not only does this give you more stand up room near the edges of the tunnel, but you could attach a movable curtain to a wood frame which you could open and close at will by rolling it up from the ground to the bottom of the arch (or dropping it down for that matter). Mine was so small that opening the door on the front and using an automatic opening device on the back vent was enough because I only used in in cooler months. Doing it again, I would be making it to use year round because I want it for tomatoes in summer so side vents would help with air flow. After I took the plastic off of my high tunnel, a lady stopped and knocked on my door and asked if I would like to sell my greenhouse. She had no idea that we had made it out of a throw away trampoline. It looked nice. I never stop dreaming. I have a high tunnel growing on the left side of my brain and a greenhouse growing in the right and some day I am going to get both of the built....if I ever finish all these other projects. Right now I am off to build some shelving in the storm shelter.

Jennamae, About blogs, there are lots of places where you can set up a free blog. Or one that is quite reasonable. You can set up free blogs on Wordpress or blogger (which is different from blogher). Both have a lot of options and it seems they keep increasing what they offer for free which is quite nice! Wordpress does have a lot of very attractive templates but blogger might be a little easier to set up. There is Typepad also which is excellent. There is a fee but it is reasonable and they have many great templates and options. After you set up a blog, you can then set up a feed with feedburner. People can subscribe to your blog. This may sound overwhelming. But once you get into this, it will make more sense as you go along. In fact, I'll warn you that it is probably addicting! :-) You can even have your domain name that you use for your current website be used as the domain name for your blog if you want. You might like the options that you see for blogs so much that you may prefer to use a blog as your main website. The different blogging sites give instructions on what to do to have traffic to your domain name go to your blog just as though it was set up with your domain name originally. Then there are the social networking sites like Facebook. I haven't done much with those but people sure are using them! So you might take a look and see if they'd fit in with the other things that you do to promote yourself. Promoting yourself can keep you very busy for quite a while! But what is nice is that there is so much that is either free or cheap online! Unlike newspaper ads which are very expensive. Ginny