Fleur, Let your grandchildren know they have done fantastic creations. The fauxbois is fab! and the sphere with the glass is wonderful. I had thought about the glass baubles previously so glad to see it works. A battery operated light inside the globe/sphere would be very fun!!!!!! Michaels and JoAnns both sell them. Thank you for sharing the creations! I miss not having my daughter working with me in the mud. She is now in highschool but used to participate in many of the projects when she was younger. Dena

Oh.my.gosh. LOL!!! Did your GS not know about Aunt Mary? If he's a typical boy, he won't ever want to hear about her again! Sweet kids. :)

It was good to get a few things done - and still this wk yet. It'll be good to have a/c in the car, that'll help when it goes over 107 again. and the hair! yikes, it'd gotten soooo long and was always in my way. does the garden forum have much on desert planting? I'll have to take a look there. ML - I'll be doing xeriscape also. I took a class in it with my sister about 12 yrs ago. There are a good number of desert trees, bushes, plants to use. I need to start out with fast growing ones. probably desert willow (love those), Palo Brea, Eucalyptus and Jacaranda. the Jacaranda has beautiful purplish blooms - a former co-worker had one in his front yard and I loved it. It grew a LOT in just 2 yrs. I want another mesquite too but will probably plant that in the spring. I have to check the root growth on a few because of the conduit underground. I'll put out a few Oleanders - not my favorite, but colorful and drought hardy. a few more Bird of Paradise plants and bougainvillea. I want colorful! Several will be clumped but unfortunately a few will be loners (or I'll plant some flowering bush by them). I told dbf I wanted at least a spigot on each end of the mfg home. He did mention putting some irrigation pipes around too. If he'd do that in a few directions it'd help. 2 spigots would help a lot - I only have 1 out back now. probably only 1 tree will be difficult to water. most will be close to others I water. Want to put a tree on the westside of boy's pen also. I want an ironwood out front so I can see it from the kitchen and porch - that's slower growing tho. Organpipe cactus and prickly pear too! the prickly pear I can get cuttings from my sister. Somewhere around here is my desert plant book - I need to look for it! we do get water sometimes - usually during monsoon season. That's been rather iffy the past few yrs. We should have had rain by now. humidity is up, a lot of overcast days etc. got about 20 drops the other night. my steps were wet but you couldn't tell by the ground that even a drop hit it! sometimes we get lots of rain in the fall also. the first yr when I was putting in the conduit for electrical it rained so long and hard I came out in the rain to dig the trench. my then roommate/co-worker felt sorry for me so he came to help. it'd rained so much we gave up and headed back to town. I had to follow his van in my corolla to see how high water was to his tires - just to know if it was a dip I could make it thru. I thought we'd drown. the dogs' holes would become lakes out here! but I think total we get just 7-8 inches a yr. I do have 2 plastic barrels here - tho they will probably disintegrate when I touch them... will get something at the feed store to collect water. will have to see how it runs off of the 'new' roof. when I asked dbf why it didn't have gutters he looked at me like I was nuts. even with our little rain I think it should have something to direct the rain off of the roof. Someone just came out to get the dozer. both the dozer and water truck need worked on. they took the water truck a few nights ago. I'd never know they were back there if boy didn't raise a ruckus. He thinks those are our machines now. I did notice while out there that my head started hurting once in the humidity. ick.

moccasin - those are some nice lights! i can see why you like them. I bet they're more than 20-30 $s each tho... I loved that the globes come in colors... I'd stay away from the red tho. OTOH that could be good for an emergency signal to a neighbor. I'm too poor to pay much for the lights - even if I find a SWern one i like it's sure to be more than 30.00 and I think I should limit it to that. I need 3 - plus a few (plus) inside need replaced based on they are UGLY. I found these 2 at lowe's. both plain but would do the job - cheaply. it'll probably be the first one unless I find something better for the price in the store. around 25.00 with clean lines. I'd have to see how my chubby little fingers fit for changing the bulb. it's better I don't have to mess with those little screws and chance dropping the globe since things seems to jump out of my hands. I remember changing bulbs in the screw on globe type yrs ago. max wattage is 100w this one is about 21.00. I like it, again clean, simple lines - this one has a frosted globe. has the little screws tho and max wattage is 60w.