See, I love beautiful, serene backyard pondlets with plant life, but our backyard is mosquitoville ANYWAY, so I would not want to provide them with a big ol' maternity ward.

Also like this [link]

And my dream is to have a hot tub. HOT TUB. I would cry tears of delight and joy to have a hot tub. But right now, I would break down if I had a tub I could take a relaxing bath in again. OH APARTMENT TUB. I MISS YOU.

I tell Dan all the time I must really love him, to have given up my tub. He thinks it's charming. I am deadly serious. I haven't had a bath in a YEAR. (I do NOT count the thing I tried to have in that shallow THING in the bathroom. Ptiu!)

Amy, that is pretty, and would look nice kind snuggled a bit into my front garden (which is crazy scraggly plant-things, with a few chewed lookin' flowers right now. But I have plans for spring, oh yes!

I love our new place like cake, but the bathroom is the one disappointment. It's TINY and the tub is tiny, too. I was hoping for long, relaxing baths, but not so much.

It is brand-new, though, and very clean, which is not a bad thing by any stretch.

The one thing I'm really not happy about with my house is that most of the yard slopes,

Terracing?

I have a container water garden in the back. It's pretty low maintenance. Even stuck a solar powered fountain in it for anti-mosquito agitating and pleasant gurgly noises.

My yard in general is neglected beyond the point where most people would still call it benign, so the fact that the water garden is as happy as it is speaks to its low maintenance nature.

Terraces, Zen! I love terraces. The way they look, anyway; I suspect I would not want to do all the moving of earth required to set them up. But so pretty!

See, I love beautiful, serene backyard pondlets with plant life, but our backyard is mosquitoville ANYWAY, so I would not want to provide them with a big ol' maternity ward.

Maybe with a little waterfall or fountain you could be skeeterless? My mom had something like this: [link]

and I think you can put in fishehs to eat the skeeters

There are fish that eat mosquito larvae that you can put into water features.

Terracing?

I've thought about it! It's a huge job, though, and I'm not sure it's worth it. Like, the west-side yard, which I share with my duplex neighbor, slopes steeply from a narrow flat space next to the house to a narrow flat space that ends in a tall fence between us and the apartment complex next door. The front yard slopes just enough to be annoying, down to a deep wide ditch at the roadfront for stormwater. The east side, also shared, is mostly taken up by tall pine trees, which I love, and the seven feet or so of space between their bed and the house, yes, also slopes. This is the downside of living on a mountain. It's not very attractive, but I don't know what to do with it.

I miss my old tub too, Erin. There's one at my parents' house that I adore when I visit. But I miss my old one and weep I no longer live with it. My fault, I moved away. But I weep.

Four is NOT an age I enjoy. The 4 that I am most often around has discovered Drama and it's such a change from the first years of her life. It's like a mini-teenager who can't fend for herself. I, personally, cannot wait until 5.

And you can't even give her weed.