Bummer. That said, I am not a purest about anything. I think that if most of your yard is catering to wildlife , that this will not tip the long term effect. I think that bamboo is a good dirt builder and birds love it. Wildlife is also attracted to non native species.. My only concern is the damage that it might do to the foundation over the years. The clumpers do expand out in a formidable root mass when happy. Are they allowed to build right up to the plot line? I had old ubiquitous running bamboo that we contained in retaining walls and it got above 2 floors and would have done most of the third floor. I imagine with the hanging over of the crown yours will create zones of privacy, maybe not complete privacy. I think that you will get used to it after a decade or so. I found that we are flexible humans and the allusion of privacy is often just as good as complete privacy in our minds.. Is there anything else that you can plant. I suspect that the bamboo does capture rain in the leaves and mosquitos love it or so some people say. Others say that is a myth. I had an awful mosquito problem and I had a lot of bamboo in the neighborhood. I also had a river not far away and a dry creek bed with wallows.. I read somewhere that it was the bamboo that attracted them but I have also read the opposite..

There's software that will let you clean it up, but personally, I think it adds to it. It's not a "professional production" and I wouldn't give it any thought unless you want to record it again. If you do, try to set the recorder down or use a handheld microphone. Better yet, a lapel microphone will do nicely. Only a few dollars to buy one. If you have a mic/headset you can record it on your computer too however my experience with them is you can often record the breathing so it could have its own issues. I wanted to get my dad to record his war stories. Had I owned a microcassette at the time I would have recorded them when he started talking about them. My sister went through some old cassettes I had given her a long time ago and found a recording of my mother. She was quite surprised, as was I. Didn't remember having a recording of her.

I never thought to actually take them somewhere else. I usually use an adobe programme to keep them on and print and email them from, but Sonny uses Lightroom as he loves to mess about with them and he finds it a good programme. We both have our own computers but the printers are set on Sonnys computer. He uses an Epsom 1290 for the photo's but we also have an Epsom 1200 and a HP Lazerjet 6L. I think we have about 5 or 6 computers on the go at once all on servers. I never know which Sonny is using as he has 3 monitors on his desk at once. He is a computer geek really and luckily it got him a job about 10 years ago after quite a lot of years unemployed where he taught himself all about them and his other love was photography so now he can put them together to make lovely photos. But it is also a talent I feel, as not everyone can make them look as good as his even with the same equipment. I certainly can't. At the moment on his gallery 2008 for July he has a photo of mosquito larvae which look so strange. They are in an empty flowerpot that had filled with water. They are certainly worth going for a look. Here is a link that might be useful: Alisons nature reserve/sonnys gallery

I guess I'm a sentimental old fool (at 53, LOL). Here is my experience... I have a few picture books printed online and they are great. However, IMHO, they can't compare to actual printed (or developed) pictures. I was tasked with writing a biography of my M&D's life, and believe me, it wasn't short! To do this I used verbal accounts from my M&D; a few thousand slides from my M&D, GP's and Great A&U; hundreds of photographs; my Great Aunt's daily journals; and tape recordings we sent from overseas to my GPs'. I digitized and transcribed almost all of it. Even though the slides were decades old, the digital quality was amazing. The scanned photographs, even the old, old, B&W's, were generally good quality. I only used a few pictures that were taken with a digital camera. The best part of the whole process was the obvious telling of their life story by my parents to me. As an adult you hear stories you weren't aware of as a child or wouldn't have been privileged to. The second best was handling the old photographs. Actually feeling them in my hands, turning them over to see if there was any writing on them, thinking of all those who had looked at them before me. Right up with this feeling was the handling of letters and my Aunt's journals. It's as if I could re-touch family members deceased through the pictures, letters, and journals. The nostalgia cloaked me with love when sifting through the pictures, holding each one in my hand and remembering. The biography is now complete and published. It's an amazing story and there are pictures, journal excerpts, and even conversations from the tapes that were transcribed (like when my sister was born and my Dad got the other four kids' reactions and my Mom talked to my Grandparents right after the birth). This is a long winded way to say that I prefer, much prefer, holding and looking through actual photographs to looking at the pictures printed in a book. If they are in a photo album, you can still take them out, look at the back, handle them, scan them, kiss the faces of your loved ones, hold them next to your heart. It's just not quite the same, for me, when it's a picture printed on a page of a book.