Happy B'Day Donna! Hope I'm not too late. Hi Everyone, I know I've been away for some time. Had a very bad bout of winter depression - I think EVERYTHING caught up with me and my yakking energy just died. I've been seeing a psychologist at the hospital to talk about things and I just love her. Also did a pre-registration for a fall course - group therapy, education - to relearn how to think about things. As for weight loss - FINALLY BACK ON TRACK. I'm starting all over again at my start weight of 147 - my goal is anything from 135 - 140 and MAINTAIN (that's the hard part). This is year 3 of my overall weight loss plan. I started at 162 a few years back. I am 5'3", medium frame so any extra weight hurts. My hips still grind, I get back spasms from the weight I carry now so my health is telling me off. Please accept my apologies for being MIA for so long. I had to recoil and recover some more from life. But I'm back to rattle everyone's cage again. As for work - I cannot get office work nor any type of response in Ottawa - Canada's capital city - you have to be 'french' and have a government security clearance of 'secret' to get anything I used to work at. I don't care anymore - Ottawa can get stuffed as far as I'm concerned. I returned to college in the winter and started taking web design courses. I now work at home part time, through hubby's work contact, doing very basic grunt web work. It's a small start that I am very, very grateful for. A long project with a lot more to learn to stay employed. New software support books to read, learn. At least it gives me something extremely important - HOPE. And it's progressive in continued education (e-learning, internet, home study courses...school...). Gosh this has been such a long road for me over the last 5 years coming home from Scotland. I still miss my Mom. It has been 10 months...but seems longer because the Mom I lost left a few years ago when her body started slowing down. I don't feel like crying anymore - I like to remember our fun moments and how much she gave all of us. Being adopted I think I was blessed to have the parents I had. As for my sisters (long story for anyone who doesn't know me...) they are part of my therapy discussions. I have to let them go for my sanity. I love them, always will, wish them happiness in life and pray one of them finds a way to let go of her inner pain. It's a shame but it's the only way right now I can take care of myself. Geez, look at me again, babbling non-stop. I'm working on eating smarter, smaller meals during the day and drinking more water, less coffee. My sleep is still erratic but that's just me. Today we're going up to an unseasonal 25 degrees or about 80F. So I'm heading outside shortly to work in the garden. It's time I got my butt back here, eh? LOL to all of you, Peggy

Yeah, from one Bad Self to another. Keep up this thread as it's motivation for us DIYers to get something done this week. I finally have something to report! This week I ordered my new garage doors and commercial grade railing for a back elevated concrete deck. Still shopping for the hammer drill masonry bits, though. The rail will be delivered Tuesday then it's a race to get the concrete drilled for install before the weather converts to hot. Next up in the kitchen is floor renovation of about 900 square feet of hardwood. Uh, let me re-phrase that. My kitchen is not 900 square feet, but the hardwood in my kitchen is also on most of the first floor and it will all be refreshed at once. But first, yesterday I got around to fixing an "ugly" in a bathroom. This bathroom is undergoing a facelift with a new frameless glass sliding door, soon. The tub is a 42 inch wide tub that doubles as shower pan, so you have a roomy shower, but only ONE fixture to clean. : ) The tub had a false front panel that originally matched the tub, but over the years has yellowed from UV exposure, you can see how it's more ugly yellowed on the left where the window throws more light, than on the right. Kohler wanted $300 some bucks for another panel with the same problem, so that's ridiculous and I nixed that solution. Time to get out the tools, and a visit to the store. So yesterday I made a new panel using PVC bead board strips and trim, and PVC cement (no primer as I needed the cement to stay clear) and my handy-dandy chop saw. I'm really pleased with the result. Cost was about $25 for materials, including a $6 new can of multipurpose pvc cement (which I had to buy because it wasn't tainted with purple from primer as my other cans were. I plan for now to leave it uncoated and let the white mimic the white of the tub, but I could paint it the wall color. As it is, it is virtually maintenance-free - always a good thing in this house. Here's the ugly problem:

Megan, I don't really know of any bird feeders that can prevent the issue of dropped seed---it isn't a problem here because our free-ranging chickens scour the ground beneath the feeders searching for dropped seed. I don't suppose you can have free-range chickens there? Actually, there are some seed trays that you can attach beneath feeders that supposedly will catch dropped seed, but I've always wondered what stops birds from kicking seeds out of the dropped seed trays? One year, I put a piece of plywood on the ground all winter beneath the feeders so I could sweep up seed that fell to the ground and landed on the plywood. That works, but it gets tedious.....although I noticed the chickens policed the plywood for me most days. When you live in an area as rural as ours, for the most part, the existing wildlife takes care of the other wildlife. I'm mostly referring to rodents....everything eats them....snakes, owls, coyotes, bobcats, ring-tailed cats, etc., so they are not as big of a problem here as one might imagine. During the day, our own cats will hunt them, especially Pumpkin who is the youngest and considers himself to be the Great Hunter, but our pet cats are locked up indoors at night, because pet cats that stay outdoors at night usually don't last long around here. Jen, I'm laughing about the Indian princess comment. It is so true. dbarron, Your connection to John Ross is fascinating. I've read quite a bit about him. He lived a very interesting life to say the least. Jennifer, You can get bogged down in that genealogy stuff, and I just do not even want to go there and get started on that so I stay away from it. I know if I ever started it, I would be obsessed with it and would drive myself crazy. It is exciting to think about plans for the 2019 garden. Rebecca, I do have some Burpee exclusives that I like to grow , like Brandy Boy tomatoes and Biker Billy peppers, so I have to order from them occasionally, but I try to only order once every 3-5 years and to just be sure I order enough seeds to last a few years. Their seed prices have gotten so ridiculous and before I order anything from them, I make sure they are the sole source for it. (I have found that sometimes a seed company will claim to be the exclusive source for a specific variety and they are not, so I always search for another source to see if they really are the sole source.) I think Jambalaya could be a good one for you, but I haven't grown it myself. It is supposed to bear early and often, so at least on paper it sounds good. Cajun Jewel is fairly dwarf as well but bigger than Baby Bubba, and Jade and Lee are two other varieties suitable for containers. Shumway's has Pink French Quarter and Red French Quarter this year and they both are dwarf, and look good in the photos online, but I haven't grown either of them yet since they are new. Last year my Stewart's Zeebest plants produced so much okra I couldn't keep up with the harvesting, so I want to grow smaller, less productive plants this year. I know that sounds crazy, but not being able to stay caught up on harvesting and using all the okra drove me nuts. Jennifer, It was cold. It felt worse, I think, because it mostly stayed cloudy. We got a little sunshine late in the day. This coming week's weather doesn't look too great. Oh well, it is winter time and I guess we just have to deal with it. To clean chicken (or any sort of bird) poop off anything, you need Poop-Off. You generally can find it in farm supply stores, feed stores, and in most pet stores in the bird section. Or, you can order it online. I'm sure Amazon.com has it. Here is what it looks like: Poop-Off It really does work, but if the poop has been there a while and has dried out long-term, you may have to go through several rounds of spraying and scrubbing to get all of it removed. Wear gloves and a respirator type mask---not because of the Poop Off spray but because of the possible pathogens that can be found in bird poop. I hate buying veggies too. That's why I try to fill up 2 or 3 deep freezes every summer, but still, they are things we don't grow or that cannot be preserved long-term (like lettuce, for example), so I just try to buy organic and still must remind myself that purchased produce never will have the freshness or quality of home-grown. Going to Central Market for produce helps---their produce is superb in quality and quantity and going through the produce section for me is like a trip to Disney. I have a good time. However, being a gardener, I'm always tell Tim when we are there that it still kills me to buy produce, even when it is theirs. We still have fresh onions from the 2018 harvest, but some of them are starting to sprout now so I don't know how much longer they'll last. I do have a ton of them already chopped and frozen. It isn't the same, I agree, but I'd rather take my own frozen produce out of the freezer and cook it in winter than buy it at a store. I have enough frozen tomatoes to last us another year, and they smell garden fresh when I thaw them out and have them cooking away in a pot on the stove so I can make soup or chili or whatever. It is about to be chili type weather again, I believe, based on our forecast. It is time to go start next week's thread for all of us to post on. I cannot decide whether to make it December week 5, or January week 1. lol lol lol. Decisions, decisions, decisions! Dawn

I'm so far behind with you all, I'll never catch up. I posted this in last week's instead of this. . . so will just go ahead and post it here. And now back to read up on the past week's. Elderberry bushes in bloom are so pretty! I have two out front but at the corner of the yard, so we don't ever really see them. I am SO sorry about your uncle--and all the grief in every way for everyone. The grasshoppers are on their way to two wins in two years. Bad deal. However, I'll count my wins--a yard full of butterflies, too, at this point. Blueberries, blackberries, peppers, a couple tomatoes, garlic and onions. Kind of a strange harvest! I don't know if I'll ever get my laptop debugged so I can sign on GW on it. For now my indoor big computer's the only access. Well. . . cell, but I don't use the cellphone for this stuff. And I'm out on the deck from morning til I fall asleep in the evening, for the most part. It was quite nice here yesterday and the day before, Larry--it would have been great gardening weather, but the lake is finally down low enough so that we can launch the boat, and the high was just below 80 for most of the time were were out there--morning--beautiful weather. Fishing no good. Zip, nada. Jennifer, your garden looks just beautiful, as did your kraut! I'm going to wind mine down--easy stuff like the strawberries, onions, garlic and asparagus. We really need to get together one of these days, Rebecca, here or there with the others. My beets didn't turn out either. ONE. One great beet. lol Crazy busy here. Been working at the school garden--and right now John and I are working up an inventory--he started it and I've been filling in the blanks. I laughed--Rick, I hate morning glories, too. John has been very conscientious about getting them out of the beds--BUT. we have this 8' tall fence all around the property. . . I've been planning to get the fence obscured along one long side by elderberries, blackberries, clematis virginiana, coral honeysuckle, and crossvine. And then John had the great idea of moving the morning glories into pots with bottoms removed and setting them against the fence. If there's one place we're fine with them, it's there. Fun idea, actually. And that's about it from here. Take care, all.