Sunshine8, There are early, mid, and late tulips and daffodils, even some early early and some late late ones. Contrary to Cls009, most of my daffs bloom before my tulips, but not all. Maybe you have early tulips and late daffodils. :~) If you know the names of your varieties, you could probably check some of the online bulb catalogs such as Scheepers, Brent & Becky's, or Van Engelen and get an idea of the sequence of your bulbs. Also I find that my established bulb areas tend to differ in timing somewhat from the newly planted ones, even if the bulbs are the same, usually being just a bit later, but not always. Eventually they settle in and bloom pretty much together, if their conditions are similar, if not, they go their own way. Also, late October is pretty normal bulb planting time in Michigan, so you should be okay that way. Wet and varmints are pretty much the main problems for newly planted bulbs. Daffs which are poisonous, are not usually eaten but may sometimes be dug up by varmints hunting tastier things. Tulips are loved by many creatures, but crocus are by far the most favored in my yard.

Your compliments are all so nice! I'm so glad that people besides me like it. :) Maryann, I suppose that would work well to keep the birds off of your blueberry bush. You'll probably think, "Awck!" when I tell you that we have 16 blueberry bushes and I let the birds eat all the berries. lol You see, another passion of mine is feeding birds and providing housing for them here at my place. I just love nature. Yes, I made the frame that large to put potted host plants in there. I know that swamp milkweed gets up to four feet tall, so I wanted to make sure there was some space above that yet. I guess carpentry runs in my family...my grandfather was a carpenter. I'm not really a carpenter but like to do small projects here at the house. My next project coming up is building a bat house or two as soon as I can find the wood that I want. Maybe you want to try something like my frame this year. That would give your Cecropias plenty of room. Susan, It's not hard to make the frame, just takes some time. I hot glued the pieces before I screwed them together; it makes it a lot easier and you don't have pieces of wood sliding all over the place while you're drilling. I figured out what lengths I needed before I went to Lowe's and I had them cut the wood to the lengths that I needed. That saved me a lot of work! Besides, I wouldn't want to be outside in the cold weather cutting wood. Maybe others on here will also build a frame. The trick of it is to find straight 2 x 2's at the store. That was a task in itself. Now that I realize how big this frame is, I'm not sure I'll need the bird cage this year. I would still like to do it though sometime. As it is, I'll have the cats in this frame, in a big storage container with a screen on top, in that laundry cart that I showed, and on potted plants sitting on the back porch, so I think I already have plenty of room for them. Cat, Yes, it is big, huh. It seems REALLY big sitting in our living room. I want to make the two panels yet for on the top before I take the whole thing apart for storage until this summer. I bet you could easily build this. You can probably tell how to make it just by looking at the picture. I think I will like it too for the reason that you mentioned, and I think this frame will be so much better and easier than putting the cats in individual jars and taking care of them that way. They'll be able to chomp away and I won't have to be feeding them fresh leaves several times a day because they'll already have them right there. I'll just have to keep the plants watered. Also, I won't have to worry about being there as soon as they emerge as butterflies. With the jars I was always worried that they would fall and not be able to get back up; they found their way back to the stick though. Maybe this frame was overkill for just my second year, but I plan on raising cats and releasing the butterflies for years to come, so now I have something that will hopefully last awhile and work well for protecting the cats/butterflies/pupas. If you decide to make one and have questions, just ask. Thanks again everyone for all the nice comments!

Hi Su VA, Well, you know how it goes ... the older you get ... the more the memories of the ``good old days`` come back! I`ve been here about ten years, maybe some more ... started during the Spike regime, and got sent to `Disney` a few times ... at first, wondered what the heck was going on, as we didn`t get any ``gentle reminders`` then! Was here during the ``pay-days`` (not the store kind), and reimbursing someone because I didn`t have PayPal was expensive, for a Canadian Dollar was only ``worth`` (whatever that means) about 80 cents in ``real`` money ... not about a dollar, give or take a few cents, as recently. (How often does one get to speak one`s mind ... for free ... with seldom any repercussions)! Plus ... what does one call someone who `bugs`` one (sorry - question mark doesn`t work). ole joyful

I have given my nieces their initial every year for a dozen years and can't always find vintage. etsy. You will always be able to find vintage initials on etsy. I agree with Chispa. It depends on the item and if I really want it (perfect for my space, could use in more than one place in the home, functional as well as pretty). Ok, I have to take back the functional part since I tend to mostly buy vintage/antique accessories just because. The things I have probably over paid for, but was happy to overpay, were things I had seen (online or in magazines), searched for (online and locally), and finally found (locally, traveling or online) - at a price I felt comfortable paying.. and didn't think was over the top. They had to be in good shape (not falling apart or damaged). A case of RH vs Antique. They have os de mouton wing chairs, on sale for $1185-1580. (regular $1395-1860). I had been searching for a pair of antique os de mounton arm chairs. Decent shape. Didn't care if they needed recovering since I would rather. I finally found a set of four, and luckily the shop owner was willing to divide. I purchased a pair, found the perfect fabric at bargain price (reg $27 a yard, and I got 4 yards for $27) yet it cost me $700 to recover both (included removing the back which was red leather, so they had to redo the webbing). Total for the pair, I spent about the same as one RH chair regular price. I'd much rather have an antique or vintage piece. I can justify the recovering expense since I will never recover them again. Getting the fabric at a bargain helped offset the cost of the chairs and recovering (at least in my mind). The chairs turned out great, they bring me joy every time I see them and they are comfortable to sit in. Even the cats enjoy them. I don't live in a "no touch" zone. So while I may not want to pay $900 for stone finials (value thing, like Chispa), I don't mind paying $900 for something else. Here is a link that might be useful: my os de mouton chair saga