RE. RE. Abuse record...........

[BillandJeny]

Hi guys, just got back from New Mexico, and this is the first thread I clicked on. I see nothing much has changed in the old neighborhood. How are the real estate values? And how are all of you?

Zhan

[escape]

Zhan! Great to see you again. My house value has increased by almost double. I actually considered selling it, till I told Mark, who then gave me the look of, "if you think I'm digging up another garden and moving it, you're crazy."

So, same same.

Victoria

Need a good, cheap, knowledge expanding present for yourself or a friend?

[galyles]

Hi Zhan,

It's just like time stands still isn't it .......if only it would!!!!

Welcome back

Geoff

[madgardener]

"BillandJeny" wrote in message news: [e-mail]...

ZHAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((HUGE MADDIE HUG)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) I MISSED you!!!!!! This might explain the returned cards, returned cd's, returned e-mails.............. messages of "the number you have reached...........has been disconnected..........." WELCOME HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The word is out......Tennessee is the place to be........farms are being sold as soon as the probate passes the year, divided up and turned into mushroom subdivisions. Lowes commercial sales is pop pop pop, but the grass is still green, the sky is still blue and it's still awesome around here. Of course property value has more than quadrupled since you poked yer head up here two years ago come the 18th..............not ours. I might be able to push selling the chaos for just over what we refinanced to pay the thugs (who still claim we owe them, so same old, same old) We now have TWO dawgs again...............Sugar is the proud adopted mama of Sméagol, an unidentifiable loveable hound of sorts. Male this one......the gardens are peeping their eyes open, a few crocus, the Cornelian cherry is trying to burst, my Diane witch hazel refuses to give up her red threads yet..............little golden mouths popping in the western bed amongst the seedlings of seeds that are germinating that Dian sent me from Oregon, plus massive digging damage done by Smeagol and lately, a throw back regression from Sugar who tore up major work under the black cherry tree shade bed because Squire had the door open yesterday and wasn't paying attention to what she was doing..............she lives still, but the two foot deep hole is heart rending, especially when I see I lost the Amber Waves heuchera I had nurtured this far, and most of Pottingshed's (Bev's) "taters" or antique woods hyacinths. I was tucking over 120 bulbs back into the hole and I still wanna know, where does the soil go???????

I'm getting the itch to change locations, but feel like we're here for the duration. We'll see what happens. I keep playing John's lottery number he dreamed about. I have morphed into a fat little Southern woman........sigh..................Squire has dropped almost 65 pounds living in his semi and driving for Heartland Express. He is over this carnage on the road.............he longs to be home more now. And Mike is STILL with us.......................................................................... ...............

How are YOU?? Catch up!

madgardener, still up on the ridge, back in a slightly neglected and overgrown Faerie Holler, overlooking English Mountain (whose night lights are more and more prevelant against the deep purple twilight southwards) in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7? Sunset zone 36

[BillandJeny]

Mexico. Too far out in the boonies to have a computer. After Hurricane Ivan blew us out of Pensacola we landed in New Mexico. We have bought a double wide here in central Florida in a retirement community so we can be around the grandkids part of the year. I won't admit to being trailer trash but it is the first home I've ever had with VIN numbers. I can do all the gardening here I want to as long as I don't make it difficult for the maintenance crew to mow. If I do then we have to mow it ourselves. I'm sure Bill will keep me in check. In NM all my gardening is done in containers. I remember the pictures of your garden in Dallas, IMHO you're lucky you got him to dig it up the first time. :-)

Zhan

[BillandJeny]

Snipped

You were sending mail to a cement slab!! The wind took the fence, shed, and trees 5 miles north. The storm surge took the house to the Yucatan Pensulia. Sure made packing up easy but we got nice thank you notes from everyone.

I'll email you on updates. I don't want to get flamed for off topic, my asbestos undies are in the Yucatan with the house.

zhan

[madgardener]

Snipped>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

You were sending mail to a cement slab!! The wind took the fence, shed, and trees 5 miles north. The storm surge took the house to the Yucatan Pensulia. Sure made packing up easy but we got nice thank you notes from everyone.

I can imagine............I was sure worried about you. My ex-husband who lives in Pensacola said his trailer parts business wasn't torn up too badly, but I wonder. He finally got a land line and called to let me know he was alive (like I was too worried about his ass........I think not) I just hope he stays down there in Pensacola.

I'll email you on updates. I don't want to get flamed for off topic, my asbestos undies are in the Yucatan with the house.

Ahhhhhhh good enough then. I can wait patiently. I still live in the same place, even if the mortgage is now almost too much to afford now thanks to the IRS thugs (and they STILL say we owe them the same crap, I'll never be rid of them until I hit the lottery and pay them off once and for all) LOL

Since when did a little WARMTH bother you? You were the one with the aversion to cold.............................. Like you always said, you loved a good food fight...... I answered your post towards me but there was a fatal error in your e-mail address..........hmmmmmm I'll try again. Speaking of food fight, you need to holler at Tomkanpa, he's been pining for yer humor and wit............................I look forward to hearing from you. Hell, CALL me. I'm off the next two days (February 8th and 9th) if you need a reminder to me number, I'm STILL in the book......................LOL maddie

[madgardener]

opined:>>>>>>>snip, prune, >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Now look here, around here we call those MODULAR HOMES!!!! Squire and I have been looking at those for a few years now. I've even considered getting one, tearing the house off the foundation and getting someone with a crane to put one on the foundation so I could have a house with TWO or three bathrooms and four bedrooms and den/kitchen. It's either that or we trash the inside of the house and make it the way we want. At the rate we're going, no one in their right mind would buy this place, no matter how ecclectic it is.

What I long to do is finally hit the lottery number that John dreamed about that he keeps playing, and buy the biendejo (sp?) across the driveway out completely and after bulldozing HIS worthless house, hiring Carmichael to haul ALL the non running vehicles on the property, tearing down the assorted outbuildings, and the old three story barn (saving all the wood and replaning it of course, you can't replace old oak and the like and it'd make great material to use), making a better road to that barn, and putting a Palm Harbor house where the barn is using the recycled wood as the outer clapboards and what not............and digging a deep pond in the lower pasture to stock with catfish, bluegill and bass (if you build it, the rest will come.......cranes, frogs, etc). There are better trees further down in the property, and as you remember how we scraped ourselves up treking thru part of the land that day (I am still mortified in trying to help you over the barbwire..........I'll learn). I actually went further inside and wonder why on earth no one built further in but realized the answer was because it used to be Joyce's dad's farm. It's perfect now for a home to be tucked way back where the barn is now................and there is a nicer view back there.

THAT is MY dream. I still like it here, but damn lady, even YOU would be shocked at how much it's been built up around here. A lot of Floridian's have relocated up here, and the property value is rising like flood waters. Mine are still low but I smell change in the winds. I know purchasing other land would cost dearly and this island of land that is a "green belt" would be easier to get at cheap prices because of the restrictions in building. Since my house is the real one and they won't let him build on the land (something about grandfathering, so his three kids and his sister's four sons are really S.O.L when it comes to selling the land when he passes on for profit. And she's moved in with one of her son's and his new wife now up in Wisconsin so I don't think she'll move here even if he goes despite that she has life rights too). Greed will play a huge part in it when he goes with his kids, especially the one daughter over in Seymour, but unless Dandridge city counsil gets up off it's butt and rezones this land into buildable property, and that means a road...........paving, I don't see it happening. I might just be sitting in a good spot. We'll see............

That's what I really want though. There is a subdivision just east of me, I can see the lights of one house. They won't put a road thru here because it's a one way in and out subdivision. Wish I'd known about the land when we were first looking. I'd be living there now with a nicer plot of land.....but can't wish for shoulda woulda coulda's......

There is another subdivision behind us to the north that scares even me, but that won't touch us either as there is a quite distinct hill and ridge separating us from that as well. I just see houses building up around us and below. You would notice the eleven new houses on your way up my winding road. And much longer, the field before the woods will sell and there will be even MORE houses I have a feeling..........sigh........................At least they're nice houses. Not like the expensive ones across the road though. Or the small mansions they'll build in Majestic Bay acres................................yeppers, Tennessee is the place to be............Dandridge still doesn't have a traffic light though ! LOL

I can do all the gardening here I want to as long as I don't make it difficult for the maintenance crew to mow. If I do then we have to mow it ourselves. I'm sure Bill will keep me in check.

Oh heck, he can handle a little bit of mowing. How much property comes with your modular? Half acre? 50 X 100? Acre? 200 X 200? Give me idea's. Gonna grow ornamentals or veggies and herbs and such? Or all the above? I still long for a more level area to put tomato's and peppers and spinach and beans and the like. ....I just might make this year the one where I tear down the shed behind the house to free up that spot for a veggie patch. It might lie north of the house, but gets rather intense eastern, southern indirect and western exposure. I'm sure the veggies would be fine. I would even cut down more Jack's if need be. I found an inexpensive but honest tree cutter. He cut down six of my Jack's for $100 last year. I just need his number again to call and get him to drop six more for me.He just doesn't haul them off.

After Ann and her new hubby, Greg came to visit last year, she saw where I could even make a garden if I'd cut a good swath of trees down to do it. I'd rather clear the patch behind the house though and leave my woods on either side alone and thin the pin oaks and such out altogether and do my rooms and paths in the quiet shade and such.

This year I'm determined not to cram another plant in up top of my ridge by the house in those nine beds I've made. I'm cleaning out fence on the west side, whacking saplings, burning a pile of wood that will bring the fire department up here (I'll get a burn permit first to cover my butt) and scare the neighbors, and then clean out Squire and my first attempt at the first woods room that has started to return to the wild where I planted the Harry Lauder's Walking Stick or Twisted Filbert, Florida Kousa dogwood, Yoshino cherry and Forest Pansy Redbud.

The Zebra grass and Yellow archangel lamium has taken quite nicely. And I noticed the yellow twig dogwood has survived along with a larger Snowflake viburnum at the back of one of the woods boxes. The 17 year locusts females damaged quite a bit more than I realized. There are deformed and drooping end branches EVERYWHERE, and my Yoshino cherry tree lost her leader tip. I have to get a ladder and prune it to encourage branching, and weed out and remove all those sneaky pin oak saplings. That will keep me busy for awhile. Not to mention I'm once again going to have to remove acres of Vinca Major. More than normal I fear. I'm starting to see it in places I never put it at all......and it'll trip you if you don't watch out.

Gardengal's Diablo ninebark should be placed in a more prominant place, it's too happy there next to the fence, but it will be competing with tenacious honeysuckle that is flat determined to reclaim the chain link fence. I have to keep a wary eye on Miz Mary's brother in law when he moves his cattle to the pasture next to me. If he uses post he might kill everything I have planted near my fence. I need to get him to allow me to just burn the dead and dry stuff near the fence line on the pasture side. Post or professional stuff will do in everything I've struggled to get established. Right now there is a Diablo ninebark, Lance Leaf Helianthus, Wine and Roses Weigelia, Variegated Weigelia, Oak Leaf Hydrangea, woods poppies, violets from all my friends at the newsgroup is establishing, another Forest Pansy redbud that is replacing a long dead mimosa whose stump the cats won't let me push over, the Zebra grasses and Crape myrtles interplanted among them, and despite that the lilac's are a bit further, I'd fear the seepage would get their roots too............

Thanks to John's convincing, I'm taking cuttings this year of every ornamental shrub along the fence so I'll have more. And JOhn's Deutzia has finally gotten it's wind and might give me my first blossoms this year. Just tearing out the privet and vines will be a major undertaking. And undoing the massive damage the dogs have blessed me with lately (grrrrrrrrrrr)

In NM all my gardening is done in containers. I remember the

you're right about that one! I still do massive container gardens. I'm eyeing some of them to top the space under the Lady Jane magnolia I planted halfway into the ground at the bottom of the concrete driveway. I built a three high retainer wall around the whole thing after talking to Pam about the rootball being not deep enough. I can't deepen the hole now, the bush is LOADED with tens upon tens of fuzzy buds waiting impatiently for spring to burst open. (pictures will be sent, I promise you)

before I get flamed for long winded, I'll end this babble........there's more brain droppings, I'll share if I get a response back. And I bet Geoff will be glad to send you a calendar of Scottish origins. I got mine just in time for boxing day and it's a beauty........ and yes, I'm bragging a bit, but I sent him one of Tennessee wildflowers and nature as an even exchange LOL

GREAT to have you back lady. The neighborhood wasn't the same when you left. maddie

[Ralph D.]

Go with fixing the innards of the one you've got. Anything that upgrades the exterior just invites folks to sprawl right on up to the next door property.

I remember a few years back I was down in the little village from here and a guy was bellyaching at me that he was not happy that I never finished the front of our shack. He says something to the effect of 'you're ruining my property values' and I said 'good... that's the idea.' Then I went on with 'you bought that house for a tarnished nickel and sunk a fortune in it for one reason and one reason only... to turn a big profit. There are three sorts of folks living out here... families who want to have a chunk of cheap property to divide up to their kids, folks who move here from the suburbs and then want us all to look like the suburbs they just left, and those who figure they can snag a few acres from someone who's hurting and make money selling it to the suburbanites. The latter then raise the property taxes of the rest of us still living here, meaning we get to pay for the rest of our lives for your profit long after you're gone... no thank you.' He wasn't happy.

But once you let them start taking over, there's no stopping them. All the zoning protections you are assured of early on are amended eventually until it's another suburban hell hole of house after house after house just like the house in front of it. They tell you the line about raising the tax base... but that's an old fallacy that becomes obvious once all that infrastructure needs maintained, repaired and upgraded.

We went around and around here, the extended family and I, about letting the gas drillers put wells on the farm. They really butcher the land, some of these guys, and we discussed whether it was worth the aggravation that it would be to go head to head with them with lawyers and such to make sure they weren't raping the farm. Then we found out that they don't allow any houses to be built for 300 feet around one... they've been drilling all around the perimeters since early November. There's gonna be a bunch of the things hissing away... but at least we won't end up with neighbors staring down our noses and in our back windows. We'll still be able to see that hillside of Poplars turning brilliant yellow in the fall.

One guy out the road sold half his acreage to a developer... then they sued him for spreading manure! If they wanted to stay in the burbs... why not just stay there? They did not win... but they cost him a lot of grief and money. He just invested $3,000 for a green outfit to come and plant a 200ft by 1100ft row of trees and brush and stuff to form a quick growing shield. It was a bargain considering what all they are doing... but he shouldn't have to and now the homeowners' assoc. is going to sue him for ruining their view without a permit. It's all A-1 (agricultural) from that point on... so they'll lose it at first, but they amend it somehow to screw him... it's just a matter of time.

When all the farms and farmers are gone... and all the green space is gone... and all the industry is gone... and we are at the mercy of the world for our every need... our nation is gonna be screwed.

I'm sure I've posted this song to you before... but it could use repeating as often as possible:

"Houses In The Fields"

John Gorka

They're growing houses in the fields between the towns, And the Starlight Drive-In movie's closing down, The road is gone to the way it was before, And the spaces won't be spaces anymore.

Two more farms were broken by the drought, First the Wagners now the Fullers pulling out, Developers paid better than the corn, But this was not the place where they were born.

There's houses in the fields, no prayers for steady rain this year, Houses in the fields, there's houses in the fields, The last few farms are growing out of here.

At first he wouldn't sell and then he would, Now there'll be children playing where the silos stood, The word came from the marrow of his bones, It was the last sure way to pay off all the loans.

The new streets will be named for kings and queens, And a ransom will be paid for every castle's dream, The model sign is crested with a lion, And the farmers they will have enough to die on.

There's houses in the fields, no prayers for steady rain this year, Houses in the fields, there's houses in the fields, The last few farms are growing out of here.

Oh, I guess no one should be afraid of change, But tell me why is there a fence for every open range?

It's a sign I'm getting on in years, When nothing new is welcome to these eyes and ears.

But there's houses in the fields, no prayers for steady rain this year, Houses in the fields, there's houses in the fields, And the last few farms are growing out of here.

They're growing houses in the fields between the towns, And the Starlight Drive-In movie is all closed down, The road is gone to the way it was before, And the spaces won't be spaces anymore, No, the spaces won't be spaces anymore.

I've seen pictures of your place, if I recall, Madgardner (winter shots?)... or maybe I'm confusing you with someone else... but nonetheless, you've been blessed with a spot to protect. Good luck with it.

ralph

feeling..........sigh........................At

professional

[TomKan]

Welcome back Zhan. I got tired of doing all the weeding by myself!!

[BillandJeny]

I can weed as long as the scotch doesn't run out.

[Ann]

"madgardener" expounded:

South facing there, Mad, and you wouldn't have to tear down your woods, you'd just clear a bit along the edge and then ease into the woods! I hope you do win the lottery, the whole hill would be awesome to own!

[Ann]

"Ralph D." expounded:

What a sad song :o(

This is happening bigtime up around our house in southern Maine, the developers are buying land left and right. When we drive around up there Hubby is constantly saying "That field used to be full of deer" or "That used to be a dairy farm". It's inevitable, I guess, but sad nontheless.

[Ann]

BillandJeny expounded:

'Bout time you got back here!