Dear Mom,

Greetings from Tennessee. This is my new house early in the morning. We moved here in July of 2007 and retired. I can't believe how much life has changed since then. It is so quiet and lovely and entertaining to be living in the country. We have a pond with frogs and goldfish and lots of birds, including a set of hummingbirds. Butterflies are everywhere, on our coneflowers especially.

Dave keeps busy painting and weeding, and I have several gardens, shady mostly but some flowers do very well. We also have a nice established orchard with blueberries, 37 fruit trees, and way too many grapes.

I planted oodles of bulbs and perennials and we made lots of raised beds too.

The soil up here on the mountain is pretty poor, so we imported tons of good composted manure, mushroom compost and topsoil, which we planted with flowers and veggies. Barrels and flower pots, and built in planters are all full of stuff too.

Here's our pond, which is loaded with adorable floating froggies. We had ducks but they didn't last, since we have foxes and coyotes here too. Ducks are pretty dumb and we don't miss them.
I am including a sase so you can write us back. Hope you are feeling well.
Melody