Well Mike, don't be surprised if they do nibble on it just enough to pull them up. I finally had to move the fence here to the other side of the driveway so our horses would stop eatting everything within their reach. As all of you could tell from the photos, none of our horses are under nurished. If anything they all need to be put on a diet. LOL They all look pregnant.LOL One of our dogs also ate on part of a brug and was sick for a couple of days. I actually thought she was going to die. She couldn't keep anything down and I'm talking about both ends. The vet just had us give her some over the counter meds and she got better. It looks like your neighbor runs a business out of his place. So don't look for him to make alot of improvements to where and how he stores his equipment and stuff. I have the same problem here. I just hate all the tractors, horse trailers, campers, and other junk being strown all over the place. I try to make George park everything at the back and in a neat little row. Where as he just gets on a tractor, does what he needs to do with it and then parks it where ever he darn well pleases. I've gone out there on more than one occassion and moved EVERYTHING to the back by the big barn. LOL Then he complains about having to walk way down there to get something. Like Kylie said, you might want to become good friends. Horse poop is very good for your plants. While your at it you might even help him build a place for him to park and hide all the JUNK/equipment he has. LOL Hope things are going well for you at your new place. Email me sometime and let's catch up on somethings. Happy Gardening, Marian

I sent my husband to the store the other day, which is something I do very rarely. He came back shocked! So now, he understands better why I do some of the things I do. I haven't really changed our diet, but have been upping my energy usage...not electricity, MY energy. :D Going across town to the cheaper grocery store instead of the one on the next block saves quite a bit..a head of iceburg lettuce at the closer store was $1.50 the other day, .79 cents at the cheaper store. At that store, I can also buy a 10 pound bag of chicken leg quarters for $6.99. I cut them up into legs & thighs, and then the back section gets used to make soup. .70 cents a pound for chicken is a heck of a lot better than the price of already cut pieces at the fancier store, which last I checked were at around $1.79 per pound. Buying various pork/beef roasts and cutting them into chops or steaks & using the trimmings to make ground meat is another thing that saves quite a bit. Buying family packs when they're on sale, and then separating the pieces of meat, wrapping and freezing them in meal sized portions (there's just the two of us) helps as well. When I was a kid, we were quite poor, and so I learned a lot of things about how to eat well on less so we do pretty well. I make a lot of Indian foods, a cuisine especially suited for using inexpensive ingredients, also Chinese & Thai which rely more on vegetables and inexpensive cuts of meat. My penchant for soups helps as well, because little is wasted. All in all, even with prices going up, I can't complain. We are blessed in this country with a bounty & variety of available foods unprecedented in the history of the world...and no matter how the grocery bill smarts, few of us work hard,all day long for just the handful of grain or legumes that will feed our family for one more day, like so many people do on this Earth.

Back in 1973 I was a long haul truck driver and I got idea that I wanted to get an Amateur Radio License, but not knowing any hams and never being in one place long enough to attend classes I did it on my own. I began by learning the code from some audio tapes, then i would dit dah away reciting road signs in code as I drove along. Finally I aquired a ham radio receiver and began copying off the air but i couldn't make heads or tails of it. I continued copying off the air for nearly a year and I could stay with the high speed code but I just could not grasp what was being said. Finally I was sitting at home a few days and a friend had been attending ham radio classes so she invited me to sit in on one with her. I went to the class and sat in on their 5 word per minute code practice. At the end of about ten minutes the instructor asked why i had not written anything, did i not copy anything? I said, at that pace, are you crazy, sure i copied it then i wrote out what was said. We talked a few minutes and i informed the instructor that i had been copying off the air but it didnt make sense to me. He said come on in the radio room and lets see your problem so I sat down to a rig and tuned the upper end of the 40meter band and began copying. After about ten minutes everybody in the room was laughing at me. I had copied a 40 word per minute transmission with 100% accuracy. My problem was that no one had ever taught me the telegraphers shorthand..Hi HI For those unfamiliar with CW (Continuous Wave commonly called radio morse code) a typical transmission would look like the following: KA1DAO DE KC8UXZ RR GE OM ES TNX FER CUL UR RST 599 599 NAME HR DICK DICK QTH MASS MASS WX CLDY ES RAIN BK TO U K Translated- KAIDAO (station being called) DE (called by) KC8UXZ (Station calling) RR means message follows) GE OM (Good Evening Old Man) ES (AND) TNX FER CUL (Thanks for call) UR RST(Radio signal report-Readibility scaled 1-5 /Signal Strength scaled 1-9 & Tone scaled 1-9) NAME HR DICK (Senders name is Dick -repeated) QTH (My location is) Mass (Nassachusetts -repeated) WX-CLDY & Rain (Weather report cloudy & rain) BK TO U(Back to you) K (end of transmission) Needless to say, i got my first Novice Ticket (Amateur Radio License -Novice level) that night. In those days a Novice license was only valid for one year and was restricted to CW only, Max 75watts output and Crystal Controlled Transmitters). Twenty one days before my Novice Ticket expired the FCC approved renewing a novice license and they approved a novice to have a tunable transmitter as well as receiver. I was so content with brass pounding that I kept my Novice ticket for nearly ten years before upgrading to General Class.

The color of my new dining room is 'French Bulldog' black, the runner for the stairs was chosen specifically because the dogs like to guard (I use that term very loosely) from the landing and we have coordinating beds scattered throughout the house. My pimped out minivan is black with a personalized Frogdog plate and Harley is the poster child for the labels on our homemade wine. So I guess the answer is a resounding yes. I'm the neighborhood dog freak - love these pictures, but always, always have a soft spot for the short noses - especially that little black pug!