I was wondering about the TP rolls, too! Oh yes, there's thousands shells all over the house. For years we went to Holden Beach, NC for Christmas. When you're the only people on a barrier island, the shells are ABUNDANT! There are still shells from NC that are packed in boxes in my shed. Tons of big cockles, olive, clams, scallops, venus clams, baby ears, kittens' paw, jingle shells, turrets and augers, so pretty! Also have shells from vacations in Norfolk VA, and Hilton Head SC. At HH, I found a lot of sand dollars caught in the tide pools. Then there are the FL shells, oh my. Every piece of clear glass I can find is filled with them, and we've found a TON of great ones on Cape San Blas, just SE of Panama City. We like to camp at the state park there and took a golf cart once and made it 7 miles down a sand path to the end of the island. Wow there were shells in the bay! You're right about throwing the live ones back in, most of the really pretty shells in FL have marine hermit crabs in them (which are not the kind kept as pets, marine crabs need an established salt aquarium.) We found a ton of purple urchins, horseshoe crab shells, big scallops with pink and purple stripes, and others whose names escape me at the moment, pounds of them. My favorite are the tiny coquina shells though. After many years of picking them up, I still have only a small jar full but we add more often, it's only 90 minutes to the beach from here. An especially good haul from a camping trip last spring:

At the rate and level you use a propane heater, it may not have the same effect on your plants... it may not be enough to affect anything... it may be that certain plants aren't as adversely affected by the exhaust, either. I'm not really sure. I just remember very clearly all the poor Poinsettias dropping wrinkled, yellowed leaves... some of the plants wilting and dying... it was quite a loss. I think if you're circulating a little fresh air into the mix, you will avoid any possibility of bad effects. Good air circulation is important for enclosed growing spaces, so it's something we do commonly, anyway. I'm so glad to hear you are getting some relief from cortisone shots! That's great news! :-) My husband went through the cortisone shots decades ago, when they first were trying to treat his damaged spine. They worked on a temporary basis, but the damage is too great, I think. He's been through every treatment there is, except actual surgery... which we refuse to go through. There are no guarantees he would come through any surgery without becoming completely paralyzed, and we're just not willing to take the chance, until he already is paralyzed. At that point, we have nothing to lose by trying. Of all the people we know who have gone under the knife for back problems... and that includes quite a few people... not one has gotten the results they expected, and a few are worse for having had surgery. We don't like the odds. And we can't afford the best surgeons or the best treatments, so we're kind of stuck. The last treatments he had were some steroid injections, which seem to have given him more range of motion in his neck, which is a good thing... but his back is about the same. It's trashed. I'm in better shape than he is... but we're both what we call "semi-crippled", or actually semi-disabled. Oh, well... what can you do? We just roll with the punches... life goes on! Josh, there may be some greenhouse pictures in my 2011 photo album. If you scroll through the pages, I think you'll come across a few pictures. It's nothing spectacular... just a small 10'x12' Harbor Freight special. We got it on sale, and had a carpenter friend put it up for us. It's not heated, so I only use it through 3 seasons, then I empty it out. I linked the album below, if you want to take a peek, though. African Violets are so pretty, but I haven't had much luck growing them. They always seem to die on me. I'm very lucky to get the few orchids I have to stay alive and limp along! In fact, I freaked myself out earlier... I went to mist the Phal I recently transplanted into a new pot... it was dying in the moss the grower had it in... and I noticed that the tiny little Dendrobium keiki that Chaz sent me several years ago is throwing up its very first buds!!! It's the first or second picture on the first page of my 2011 photo album. I'm so stoked!! I actually kept it alive, and it's decided to gift me with blooms! I couldn't be happier! See? This is one of those wonderful moments in life that I would have missed if I hadn't been taking my time, looking carefully at all my plants... it's just amazing! :-) I hope I didn't jinx it into dropping its buds! ;-) Oh, anyway... I'm thrilled you are getting a light setup and growing Gesneriads... that's so cool! :-) And you now have a nice spot to enjoy Hippi blooms, too! Whew! What a day it's been! I'm exhausted, but so happy! :-) Here is a link that might be useful: 2011 Photo Album

Well Amcf, If you're crazy then I'm right in there w/ ya. I'd thought the same abt nice striped cotton pants which had worn out at the thighs. They're washed, pressed & wating for a project. I have no hubby to account to so I can do whatever I want. I once bought a size 8 sundress (not a size I ever fit) from a thrift shop 'cause it was made of 3 different indigo & white batiks, was GORGEOUS! Right front bodice was one, left front bodice another, back bodice a third & the skirt repeated one of the front bodices. I made a sampler to teach myself Flying Geese, made 3 columns, sashed w/ indigo solid, all on a white ground w/ binding of one of the other patterns. Cost me $5 or 10, was great! Can you go buy a duplicate pair, wear one & quilt the other? Otherwise, maybe cut them down to sort shorts (w/ which to entice him) & make quilts from the legs? See -- told ya you're not alone!

Probably like most people my most intense gardening started out with buying a house. We tore out & re-did the inside from stem to stern, decorated it to our liking and took the same approach outside--we tore out & decorated that as well for curb appeal, approaching it as a sort of an outdoor room arranged to look just so. I was a neat-nik to the point of trimming plants with scissors, mulching for perfect looking neatness around chosen plants, obsessive weeding to keep up a perfect deep green, weed free 'carpet' to go around the 'furniture' and keeping it all watered ---which meant sprinklers running every other day most of the time in summer. Meanwhile, I was constantly buying more pretty plants which I arranged and rearranged or discarded as my taste changed or when I got bored. The beds kept growing in size. Perfection and lots of color was my goal along with a desire to impress passers-by if I'm being honest about it. Sooner or later I'd get bored with just about anything I bought but often I just wanted some new piece of flash that caught my eye which gave me an excuse to go plant shopping (again) which I loved to do back then. Then in 2006 we took a trip to New Mexico. I loved the wild plants growing in the countryside and the SW look of peoples yards and it hit me hard how trite and artificial my own landscape and most of the others around Oklahoma City were. None of them reflected where we lived. It was as if we had no local pride or sense of place. I remember thinking even the weeds are pretty in New Mexico. That was the first thing that got me focused on 'weeds' or more to the point, natives. When we got home I started ripping out the next day. I enjoyed doing this once I started because I was so motivated and disgusted with the whole thing and I had a focus unlike any I'd ever had. As the massive piles stacked up by the curb the yard soon became totally bare. I now had a clean slate. A wider world opened up as the country-side became the example to follow for what I wanted to see on my own small space of land. I began reading books about the dust bowl, early settlers and inevitably drifted into ecological issues and the shrinking grasslands. I felt a stronger connection to my own location where I'd grown up and always lived. I was able to see the simple beauty of it and my appreciation grew. I fell in love with prairie grasses, they reminded me of the small towns of my childhood and a strong sense of nostalgia set in. I also noticed with alarm the amount of forestation and urban sprawl happening all around me and our lack of appreciation for what is native in our area. Each new development ate up more of the prairie which was quickly replaced with green bermuda lawns & sprinkler systems along with beds filled with imported trees, shrubs, perennial and alien ornamental grasses, usually Miscanthus. Each new addition displayed a boring and expected sameness. Foreign trees are naturalizing further into the grasslands all around these additions like weeds. Around the same time, the city began urban renewal downtown and around the capitol where they were mass planting prairie grasses to serve as decorative plants. The effect was refreshing and surprisingly modern looking. Several post modern homes were being built and industrial buildings were also being refitted into high end modern housing. All of these tend to opt for a prairie type of landscape which means lots of texture and sunlight effects. The result is an spacious, open, pared down, clean, modern look and distinctly Oklahoma. It was becoming 'cool and with it' to go this route but it shows people are beginning to think of the environment. Oklahoma is a rough place to garden where nature seems uncooperative if you try to go against it. With the trend of using native plants and grasses it seems we might be coming full circle and learning about self sustaining landscaping. For me, its more interesting and appealing. I didn't start out with ideas or concerns about ecology but that change I made back in 2006 lead me there very quickly.