kelly~ After posting on another thread to see more of your house photos, I did a search and this thread came up. OMG!!!! Your house turned out SPECTACULAR. It is soooo gorgeous. I love it all. There's not one thing I see that I think should be different. It is perfect. I too love the kitchen, the wood ceiling, the stone walls, and both of the showers. That slate is amazing! That's the most gorgeous application of slate I've ever seen (and I happen to adore slate!!). I am so happy that you have moved in. How goes the progress? Are you hosting the holiday's in your gorgeous new home? It would be a crime to keep that beauty all to yourselves. LOL. :o) Is that an outdoor shower? My goodness. I could just look at your photos all day. The trees in the front are gorgeous. The view looks amazing. The colors are perfect. The wood is sublime. Girl, you couldn't have done it better. It's stunning. And I too can see why you have oodles of equity in it already! Many happy years in your new home. :o) SusanL~ I too bought the Harrod's Creek plans from Cornerstone. We ended up not building that plan (too expensive for the area we were in... it was "overbuilding" for there). We purchased a home in your state and are having it finished. So now we're "neighbors". I hope you'll post photos of your house as you progress. It was my favorite home, and I still hope to build it somewhere, someday. :o)

Gosh I hope not Rina. The first time i was in Canada was in Toronto. Drove through from New York and there was a riot that broke out. By the stadium or sports arena..whatever you guys call it. I think there was a game going on (obviously) lol, but that's when i really learned how seriously some take football! I think it was in the 70's...or maybe the 60's? i don't remember anymore lol.

I love making soil. I love it even more when someone else is doing most of the work for me. I'm itching to start some spring planting in my tiny garden, but it's technically still a bit early (our last frost date is supposed to be around the 18th or so, but these days who even knows) and I'm impatiently waiting for the contractors to show up and replace my rotted fence before I can do any planting in the back half where the pile of rock mulch over weed cloth used to be. The fence would have rotted anyway, but the bottom of it was completely eaten away where the rock mulch was piled against it. I have already put down a tiny new tree (Amelanchier x "Autumn Brilliance") which arrived bare root and needed to go in the ground ASAP, but it's not next to the fence, so it should be fine as long as the fence guys don't step on the 18 inch high forked stick which, seen with my eye of faith, is already a handsome small patio tree. The tree went in the spot where the old, scrawny, unhealthy cherry plum used to be, where I have been piling vermicompost and leaves ever since last summer. I didn't amend the planting hole at all - just dug and filled in. Enough leaf mold and vermicompost just fell into the hole to make me feel fine about the start my new tree's roots are getting. Anyway, the "someone else" who is working for me outside is a healthy passel of earthworms, which I can see out there every time I pull back last autumn's leaf mulch, which I diligently collected from the sidewalk in front of my row house and brought out back. Even if I can't set to work yet, I like knowing that they're hard at it. I've seen some of my red wigglers who rode out from my indoor worm bin, and at least three separate species of native earthworms: slow gray short guys, some really huge red nightcrawler types, and a longer, thinner, super-active wiggly worm that's new to me. I've also scattered out some seeds and grains for the sparrows and squirrels, inspired by some videos of composting chickens I've watched on Youtube: so there's been lots of pecking and scratching and digging going on in the layer of leaves, which is both fun to watch and will serve to further shred down the leaves for incorporation in the soil. When I do get to the planting along the back fence, I'll try to remember to post a soil pic as a "before and after" to the one at the start of this topic.

There have been many losses — Liam Clancy, Bang the Drum Slowly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp-OlpffDWw CHORUS Did they beat the drum slowly did they play the fife lowly, did they sound the death march as they lowered you down did the band play the last post and chorus, did the pipes play the "Flowers of the Forest" Well how do you do young Willie McBride? do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside and rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun I've been walkin' all day and I'm nearly done I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen when you joined the great fallen of 1916 Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean Willie McBride was it slow and obscene CHORUS And the beautiful wife or the sweetheart for life in some faithful heart are you forever enshrined and although you died back in 1916 in that faithful heart are you forever nineteen? or are you a stranger without even a name enshrined forever behind a glass pane in an ould photograph torn tattered and stained, fading to yellow in a brown leather frame? CHORUS Now the sun shines down on the green fields of France a warm summer wind makes the red poppys dance The trences have vanished under the plows, there's no gas no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now but here in this graveyard it's still No Man's land, the countless white crosses stand mute in the sand for man's blind indifference to his fellow man, to a whole generation that was butchered and damned CHORUS Now Willie McBride I can't help wonder why Do those who lie here do they know why they died Did they really beleive when they answered the call did they really believe that this war would end wars Forever this song of suffereing and shame the killing the dying was all done in vain for young Willie McBride it's all happened again, and again, and again, and again and again