Wow, Cliff_and_Joann, a dock cover from 1988. I'm impressed. I'm even more impressed by your pond and beautiful fish! Dbuys, there aren't any posts on the front extending down into the water, so no worries about the liner. And it is strong enough to step on, although I usually don't. Here is another photo that shows just enough of the front so you can see that there is only a board across there that does not touch the water. Now, is there anyone in NE Ohio who would like a few water hyacinths? I'm in a suburb east of Cleveland.

I would encourage you to keep it. The birds will thank you. Whenever a person buys a new home, many professional landscapers will suggest that you wait a minimum of one year before you make any significant changes to the landscape. (Go on the landscape forum and ask the question.) You need to get a feel for the property, and what is there and how you are going to use the land. There may be pockets of flowers in the landscape that are not visible at this time of year. Perhaps if you lived with the prairie grass for one or two seasons you may change your mind about wanting to convert all of it to turf grass. The prairies are so beautiful as they change through the seasons, I would hate for someone to make a quick decision without understanding what they have. Maintaining prairie grass is much easier than maintaining turf grass. Prairie grass needs no watering and you only mow it once a year. You will save yourself tons of time and tons of money if you keep the prairie grass. The prairie grasses are a part of history. Today less than 1 percent of the land that was prairie exists today. By maintaining prairie grasses on our property, we preserve a bit of history while maintaining great bird habitat. And if you insist on getting rid of it, I suggest you contact a local native plant society (or maybe a local wild ones chapter) and offer it up to them. Their members would gladly come and relocate it. If you lived close to me I would be there in a heartbeat.

I turned a nightstand drawer into a charging drawer with a surge-protected power strip that has USB ports. The power strip is attached to the drawer side, and the cord is attached to the cabinet inside wall, leaving enough slack for opening and closing the drawer. I don't have any issues with the cord.

Mariannese,your pictures do show why I was tempted by this rose; the flowers are indeed beautiful. When in rose season does yours bloom? Melissa, thanks for asking about me. Nothing has changed for me, unfortuneately. I try to get out to do some gardening, but can only go rarely since I'm so disabled that it totally exhausts me. I have to fight off the feeling that I "just can't take any more pain and suffering". I'm worried about the weather as well. We've had some rain, but the trend isn't reassuring at all. Still, I did plant out one potted rose so far, thinking that, if they ever can actually do my hip, I won't be able to do any planting while I'm recovering. One day I'd so like to get some gallicas! It seems so hard to choose amongst them; they all look so beautiful. But I'm not sure that just chill factor is the only thing that would make a rose of a particular family not do well in this climate. Setigeras are native to the American prairies, apparently, and the climate there is just so different from here. I've tried rugosas in my garden, too; only three, because each one just "grew backwards" and wound up dying.I remember in Connemara, in Ireland, seeing them flourishing out in the wild...along with rhododendrons. And there were fuchsias growing along the roadsides, big, tall SHRUBS. I never even knew that fuchsias could get so big; I've only ever seen them as small house plants. Obviously, with all the peat bogs in Ireland, one assumes that the soil there tends to be quite acid, but rain patterens are totally different from Italy, too, as is temperature. It was always comfortable there, temperature-wise, none of these terrible extremes we get here.I loved it there...