Well Joel Comm does it again with 500Words.com

Well Joel Comm does it again with 500Words.com

With the launch of www.500words.com, Joel has probably netted more money in a week than I have made in the last 6 months on my day job just by counting words already gone from the page. On top of that, he's selling the script that he had written for him to make the page work automatically and rumor has it they are selling for $500 and up. It doesn't take much math to see that he hit the proverbial internet gold pot on this one.

The interesting thing about this whole idea is the fact that no one knows if there's even going to be a good benefit to this. It could turn out to be another useless link farm or it might do as he proposes and increase traffic for the sites that have bought their words. Either way it doesn't matter because the sweet part of this deal is the fact he doesn't have to worry about it. All he is responsible for is keeping the page up for at least two years and for doing that he's raking in potentially $50,000 for the words and probably that much and more, selling a script (that will show up for free before too long on someone's script site) for even more than the words are worth. Most of us could handle that kind of success I'm sure.

How many of the copy cat sites will be successful will remain to be seen. If you look at the 1000 word page at http://1000wordpage.com you will see that they are not having the success that Joel is (and rumor has it they were first but didn't do good PR to sell it). They even dropped their prices I see to try and compete. What is the difference? I'm guessing two things. One is the popularity and reputation that Joel has and two, his ability to market a product, generate the interest quickly, and then quickly sell off the idea to others before it loses momentum. I had never even heard about the 1000 word page site until after Joel launched his 500words site. He did this with a 5000 person list he says, generated the interest in the concept just before launching it, sold everyone on the concept, and laughed all the way to bank inside of a week. Now that is internet savvy that I don't yet have and maybe never will. No matter how stupidly simple I think the idea was, and no matter how much I might think that the people buying the words or the script are betting on a loosing horse, the fact is, he sold the idea and made it into money.

I can learn two things from this. First, there are plenty more ideas out there to think of but I need to get busy and jump outside of the box and start thinking instead of drooling over others successes. Second, the old saying of there's one born every minute is more true that I want to believe. I am quickly becoming convinced that lots of people are willing to pay for a lot of things, even if they haven't a clue what their benefit might be. I guess to some extent, it's simply the "nothing ventured, nothing gained" routine, but you can bet that from now on I will looking closer at more peoples foreheads for that sign that says "I'll buy that!"

My hats off to Joel Comm, may I learn from his success http://www.wm8c.com

Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, 500words, 500words.com, Joel Comm, Internet Marketing, Make Money, Online business

Breast Biopsy or Lumpectomy of the Breast - Surgical Procedure

Early detection of breast cancer and possible cancerous lumps in the breast is paramount to successful treatment and could be the difference between living a long life and not. Breast cancer awareness and regular checkups are necessary to find potential problems such as lumps and other anomalies that could be related to the early onset of cancerous growths. Regular self exams are an important beginning point and regular mammography at the suggested frequencies is also important for successful treatment, should the worst case become reality.

During a yearly mammogram checkup, the nurse noticed a small lump while doing the manual exam and then a small shadow was also seen during the actual test in my wife’s left breast. Because of the inconclusiveness of the mammogram, it was decided that an breast ultrasound was needed to get a better look at what they were feeling. Two small lumps were found during this procedure and a follow up appointment was scheduled with a surgeon to discuss the options available.

During this visit, the options provided were two. The first option was to leave it alone and just monitor it over the next six months. The second option was to have a breast biopsy or lumpectomy and have the two nodules removed. While neither option was an easy choice to make, my wife opted to have the surgery done while the lumps were very small and less likely to be a problem or very treatable if there were something malignant found. This is where my wife and I differ, as I would likely have opted to wait and see what they did, but as is usually the case with my wife, she makes the more logical and intelligent decisions when it comes to these types of issues. Even when I needed my carotid artery surgery, which put me at extremely high risk for a stroke, it was her that convinced me to have it done as I preferred to just “let it ride” because of a silly fear I have of surgery. She always knows best and that’s why I love her so much.

The surgical procedure itself in her case comprised of two steps, due to the very small size of the lumps. The first part of the procedure was to have small wires and some dye inserted by the ultrasound technician to guide the doctors to the correct location of the nodules. This is to prevent excessive surgical incisions or size of incision to find the limps that needed to be removed. After injecting a local anesthetic to numb the area and while using ultrasound equipment to find the lumps, a small needle is inserted into the breast tissue to the location of the lump, where a small amount of dye is injected to mark the area and a small wire inserted through the needle act as path for the surgeon to follow to the correct site for the removal process.

The second part of the procedure is the surgery itself. A low grade anesthesia is used for this procedure which makes recovery post surgery a little quicker, but you are asleep for the procedure itself. A small incision is made near the site of the wire insertion and the surgeon proceeds to remove the lump and a small amount of the surrounding tissue. How much tissue is removed is at the discretion of the surgeon and depends on what he sees once the lump is found. He will remove the smallest amount of breast tissue he safely feels is needed. Once the lump(s) are removed, the incision is closed with small sutures and you are sent home the same day after surgery, as it is most often an out-patient procedure. The excised tissue is sent of pathology for analysis and you usually will have the results no more than week later and usually sooner.

If everything is negative, nothing further is done and you will continue to be monitored as before with self exams and regular
mammograms to watch for reoccurrence. I something malignant is found, you will usually be referred to an Oncologist for follow up treatments and those can vary depending what was found and the type cancer it is, from as little as nothing more if they felt they got all of the affected tissue, to more aggressive treatments such as chemotherapy and/or radiation treatments.


Early detection is the key and regular checkups can be the difference between this fairly simple procedure and having to endure much more aggressive ones. Breast cancer awareness is key and early detection is a necessity for you to be a breast cancer survivor and not another statistic. http://www.wm8c.com/breast_biopsy.htm

Technorati Tags: breast cancer, breast cancer awareness, breast biopsy, breast lumps, mammogram, breast ultrsound, breast cancer survivor

Went to the NPE (National Plastics Expo)

Yesterday I went to the NPE show to see what's new in the plastic injection molding world as well as a myriad of other plastic related technologies. Saw some pretty neat things while we were there although I wouldn't have called anything "cutting edge" this year.

This is now my 4 or 5th NPE show which occurs every three years in Chicago. I went with my son who works for a different plastics company than I do and he brought along one of his floor technicians. We had a great time as this was my sons first trip to NPE. He learned the fine art of freebie hunting at the plastics show. They are always some neat items being molded and if you are on the look out for them, you can take some stuff home with you.

The most common injection molding item we saw being made at the show this year was a process called inlay or in mold decorating. This is a process where you insert a decorated sheet into the mold and inject plastic around the sheet. What comes out of the mold is a finished and fully decorated item. We collected many holographic cups at the show this year which many different injection molding machine makers we doing this year. The usual vendors were present including, Demaag, Cincinnati, Arburg, Husky, Toshiba, Nissei, Boy, and many others.

We grabbed so many cups, cases, flower pots, and other things that we even ended up making two trips to the truck to unload. My favorite cell at the show was a 3.5 second cycle on o a Husky machine which was making 4, 8 oz. Cups at a time, removing them from the mold with stationary robot, and stacking on a conveyor. It's hard to do anything in 3.5 seconds but this was a good example of what can be done these days. The all electric machines made a good showing this year as well and seem to be becoming more and more popular as time goes by and they prove their capabilities. http://www.wm8c.com/custom_injection_molding.htm

Technorati Tags: Injection Molding, Injection Molding Company, Custom Injection Molding, NPE

Machine Embroidery - We went and did it!

We have been wanting to go into the machine embroidery business for ourselves for a long time. We bought a Husqvarna Designer I about 5 years ago and it has served us well but there are just some things that it doesn't do as well as a commercial style machine can, especially hats or caps, and very large embroidery.

We went out last week after some comparison shopping and decided to purchase a Brother PR-600II. This machine falls into the beginner commercial class of machines. It is a single head, six needle machine, capable of stitching speeds up to 1000 stitches per minute. We got a great deal on the embroidery machine, bought an extra set of hoops, the full cap hoop set (both high and low profile caps) some new digitizing software and I built a stand for it from scratch. You can see my stand project on my site at http://www.wm8c.com/embroidery_machine_stand.htm .

This machine will take us into the next realm of home business embroidery by giving us many more options for design sizes, much better cap embroidery options, and many other things as well. We can now do full jacket backs up to 12" in size (I can't wait to get my first jacket with a full size eagle on the back!) and so many more things. I think I was more excited than my wife was. So if you have custom embroidery needs, stop by the main site at http://www.wm8c.com/machine_embroidery.htm and see what we can do for you.

Technorati Tags: Machine Embroidery, Brother Embroidery Machine, Commercial Embroidery, Custom Embroidery, Home Business, Embroidered Caps

Injection Molding - Custom Ideas for The Custom Injection Molder

I became involved in the plastic injection molding world about 25 years ago and never left it. I started on the floor as a Technician, troubleshooting plastic injection molding processes, while taking classes to further my education. I have primarily spent my years in area of plastic injection processing and troubleshooting arena as a Process Engineer, although I have also spent about 7 of those years as a Project Engineer and Program Manager. I also spent a year or so as the Plant Manager for a smaller injection molding company and learned that it wasn't something I was really cut out to do. At the time, my children were in there prime growing up years and I felt that spending time with them was more important than the prestige or salary, not to mention the late hours at work it brought with it.

I have very contently spent the last 11 years as a Process Manager and the last 5 years, for a very well known custom plastic injection molder who is a premier leader in the plating and injection molding industry. I enjoy the constant learning that my career path has provided me over the years, as I need it to remain challenged in what I do. If it becomes easy or boring I loose interest and don't perform at my top level.

Troubleshooting plastic injection molding problems provides a constant challenge and as I go along in this blog I intend to sprinkle it with troubleshooting tidbits, from the most basic of questions to the more complex issues. I'm not a chemist and I don't plan on getting deep into plastic polymer chemistry but I think we can discuss some of the more common issues that plague all injection molders and especially process technicians, and if there is enough interest we can even do some online discussion to answer each others questions. I am also very versed in S.M.E.D. (quick die change principles).

I'm not the absolute expert, but after 25 years I think I can provide some helpful hints to your daily injection molding questions and issues.

Till next time...keep on molding and post you questions in this blog if your interested! http://www.wm8c.com/custom_injection_molding.htm

Technorati Tags: Injection Molding, Injection Molding Company, Custom Injection Molding, Injection Molding Troubleshooting

Cancer, Breast Cancer Awareness and Early Detection Issues

Cancer of any type is a horrible disease and the statistics tell us that it affects 1 in 3 people. What does that mean? If 24 people read this article in the next hour, 6 of you will have or know someone close to you with the disease.

I lost my own father at the age of 55 to a tumor on his stomach that was treated by doctors as an ulcer until the cancer had already spread and it was too late to do anything for him. The cancer had by then, spread to his liver and became inoperable which only left the usual choices of chemotherapy or do nothing and hope for the best few months you can before it ravages your body. And cancer does exactly that! It is vicious and knows no bounds and for all intents and purposes, is incurable except for the lucky few that find it early enough and can have it removed or treated. Even with today's advancements, little is known as to what causes it and how to stop it. My father chose chemotherapy and it still destroyed him and I must say the chemo was much harder on him than the cancer might have been. Again, it's all choices that have to be made and only you can make it.

My wife lost her father at the age of 65 to lung cancer. Six to eight months prior to being diagnosed with small cell carcinoma, a small shadow was noticed on an x-ray but like often happens it was dismissed without any serious investigation. By the time they diagnosed it, it was too late once again. Even if diagnosed earlier, he may not have survived it, but we'll never know for sure. It's like suffocating alive and a very painful way to die. Don't smoke! I quit after 30 years, which may have already been too long but it at least lowered my chances of getting the disease, not to mention all the good it did my heart and arteries along the way. Quit now, I urge you. You can read on my main site my own story with battling that addiction. http://www.wm8c.com/i_quit_smoking.htm

My wife's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 years ago. She had a mastectomy done and currently is a cancer survivor. Hers was detected very early and the prognosis is good that she will live out the rest of her days in good health. Again early detection of breast cancer is essential to improve you chances of being treated and surviving the disease.

Recently my wife's mammogram showed an anomaly which prompted them do an ultra sound and they found a very small nodule in her breast which she will have removed. We are very hopeful and putting our faith in God that it's nothing more than a benign lump that will need no further treatment. Once again, early detection and treatment is the key here and we are sure, even if against all odds (better than 85% chance it will be non cancerous) it turned out to be malignant that no further treatment would be needed. I can't express strongly enough the need for early detection. It could make the difference between spending the rest of your life with a loved one or "not". I have had a tough time dealing with this discovery, but in the end I know she's making the right decision to have this lump removed even being as small as it is. Get yourself checked before it too late. Be a survivor! http://www.wm8c.com/breast_cancer_awareness.htm

Technorati Tags: Cancer, Breast cancer, Chemotherapy, Cancer Treatment, Cancer Detection

Raised Bed Gardening Tips

Why would want to use raised bed gardening you ask? Well the reasons are quite simple and we will discuss some of them here today.

The most obvious reason is space. Many of us don't have the space for large gardens or the money for the equipment to maintain them if you do. I am an inherently lazy person when it comes to hard labor and raised bed gardening is the perfect answer for someone like me. It can be handled easily in a busy schedule and still provide the type of yield needed to do some canning if that's you desire.

What is raised bed gardening? It's having a garden where the planting bed soil is higher than the surrounding soil. There are many ways to do this and the simplest is the way I've done it in the pictures shown above. I used 4 x 4's purchased at any local hardware or nursery and created boxes to contain my garden. You will also notice that there are paths between each box for walking on. What is unique about this? Two things. Access to the planting beds is simplified and you never have to walk on your planting bed soil which means it remains soft and workable all the time allowing for excellent root growth. You can raise beds a step further also. What I mean by this is raising them to a level that might be 3 or 4 feet tall. To do this, you need to put bottoms on your boxes and mount them on cinder blocks or other strong support for the frame but the best thing about this is, you just created a wheel chair or handicap accessible garden for someone who might not have the mobility to get down to ground level any more to be able to enjoy gardening.

Why raised bed gardening? Plant density is one of the benefits of this type of garden. Have you ever read the back of a seed package? Look at the recommended spacing on the package. Lets take Swiss Chard for example. The instructions on my packet says to plant the seeds 2" apart and to space the rows 18" apart? Why!? If I can plant the seeds to inches apart, why can't I also make the rows 2" apart? I can. The reason for this is simple. In the standard garden you will have to have room to walk and weed. Now you are saying ah ha! By eliminating the need to walk between your rows to weed and access my plants, I can now plant my seeds two inches apart in both directions. This does two things. I can now crowd out the weeds by planting my seeds so close to each other that the weeds can't gerow, and I can reach them without the need for a row to get to them. This applies to to all plants as well and you can make wonderful use of a small space. I'll cover more on this subject on another page.

How do I do this? Again, the simplest method is the common 4 x 4. Always keep your boxes or bed to a width of now more than 4 feet in width. The reason for this is so that you can easily reach the entire box from one side or the other as you only have to reach 2 feet which is easily within the reach of everyone, even younger children.

You can now share the fun of gardening with the whole family! you can even give a section of each box to each person in the family so they can plant things that "they" like to eat and promote a healthy diet of vegetables while sharing a fun project with the whole family. Once you have your frame(s) built, you will want to enrich your soil with peat or other good composted materials. If you are an organic gardener, you can just used very rich compost and any of the homemade fertilizer mixtures made from organic materials. Mix this all in with a smattering of fertilizer (10-10-10 or equivalent if your not a the organic gardening type), and turn the whole thing over. Remove any grass or weeds from the turned over soil and start planting! I will be writing another page soon to explaining some planting schemes for you garden. Have fun! http://www.wm8c.com/raised_bed_gardening.htm

Technorati Tags: Raised Bed Gardening, Container Gardening, Gardening, Organic Gardening, Box Gardening, Handicap Gardening, Vegeatable Gardening

High Cholesterol and me

My favorite birthstone. At the time of this writing I am 45 years old. I am one of the lucky people with a severe high cholesterol problem that is both hereditary and physical. What this means is that I have both issues with diet and also the fact that my body just likes to over manufacture cholesterol.

There are two types of cholesterol, HDL or the good cholesterol, and LDL or bad cholesterol. Without medications, my LDL cholesterol runs in the high 200 range and HDL below 30. With total cholesterol levels above 350. This in part led to me having bypass surgery to my left arm and a "roto rooter" job done on my left Carotid at the age of 37. I have since then been a medical mystery and challenge for my doctors.

My current readings after 7 years are finally in a range that are closer to the new standards. At last check, my LDL was 78 and HDL was 46 and climbing. My triglycerides are below 100. My medication dosages to reach those levels are as follows. Lipitor 80mg. Tricor 140mg. Niaspan 2000mg. You want to talk about side effect possibilities, I have them. Luckily I haven't had any bad reactions to any of the medications after 7 years and I hope I won't. My doctor recently switched me to Crestor 40mg because my HDL levels aren't coming up far enough and Crestor is showing good results in raising HDL that were better than Lipitor.

What side effects have I experienced? I have had "occasional" muscle pain that hasn't ever been chronic or repeatable enough to say it's from the Lipitor or Crestor. My blood tests (which I have every 3 months) have never shown any evidence of issues related to muscle loss. One I will warn you about and everyone has to some degree or another is "prickly heat" from the Niaspan. I take this at bedtime with my aspirin dosage as recommended and if I fall asleep before they set in, it's not too bad. On occasion I have not fallen asleep soon enough and let me tell you, the first few times you experience this you will feel like your skin is crawling off of your body and sometimes it's even mildly painful. The longer I have taken it, the less issues I have had with it, till now I don't most of the time even notice it. Why do I take it? Niaspan will increase you HDL numbers. In my case my HDL went up about 6 points after adding it to my regimen and if you follow the studies you see that each 1 point increase in HDL is good reduction in risk for coronary disease progression.

I know there are many conflicting reports on whether cholesterol is even anything to worry about. I would say if your numbers are borderline, avoid the medications and work with diet and exercise. On the other hand if you are like me, I want to do everything to prolong the further onset of the disease that put me under the knife 7 years ago and right now I'm erroring on the side of caution until they prove it doesn't work. Best advice I have? Know your numbers! If you don't know, it could be too late when you find out. My Carotid and bypass graft has not progressed with any blockage beyond the point they were at the time following my surgery and for now that's good enough proof for me. http://www.wm8c.com/my_fight_with_cholesterol.htm

Technorati Tags: Cholesterol, High Cholesterol, Lipitor, Crestor, Cholesterol Drugs, Statins, Niaspan

Adsense - Trafic vs. Click Through rates (CTR)

I was asked a question about how traffic relates to CTR. This person is new to Adsense and thought they had nothing to do with each other. While this is true in the real sense, they do relate significantly to each other. I think what you are confusing is "traffic" vs. "click through rate or CTR". No traffic, no clicks, it's as simple as that. Any E-book out there on Adsense will give you the basics on how you can improve your click through rates dramatically. For example, let's say you get 50 visitors a day and 1% or 5 of them clicked on your ad. Now you make some changes to your site and place more ads or move them around, change colors, etc. and now you still got 50 visitors but you increased your CTR to 2% or 10 clicks (doubled). So you can make the most of your site by increasing CTR, but obviously if you can maintain that through 200 visitors, you just went from 10 clicks to 40 clicks at 2%. So you see, more traffic, more clicks and the better your CTR is, the more $'s you earn. To get traffic takes good content and lots of links. And that takes lots of work and money and effort.

The first comment was: It's not very inspiring to see those $0.10c days in the beginning. But just getting to that level should already show you that it's possible - just do more of what you're doing and eventually it will get there.

This is so very true...I in essence am a two month newbie to Adsense. I have had adsense on my site for over two years but never did anything with it. I averaged about $10 a month for over two years! Arrrrghhhh! That gets me every time I think about it now. Just by using some free e-books I found on the web the last week of March, inside of a week just by changing the layouts, adding some ads, getting rid of borders, and changing colors, I went from $10 a month to $100 a month. This is a 10x increase so not bad for a few days work. Unfortunately I have flat lined at $3.50 a day and still looking for the secret to boosting that. Time to find a niche and get it going. Unfortunately all the things I am passionate about don't have great paying ads :mad:

One suggestion I have though, is watch out for the "you gotta have this ads" and spending a lot of money on claims by people claiming they will get you large percentage improvements in your earnings. I made a 1000% improvement on my earnings although it was only from $10 to $100 a month so I just gave you that tip for free and it cost you nothing. My Adsense earnings are going to a non-profit (my church's building fund) until a $6000 pledge I made is covered so that's my first goal.

I have now just about finished Joel Comms book (The Adsense Code) and unfortunately (although some very good information in there) it didn't have the "golden egg" I hoped it would. I did find a few more ideas, but they would be more what I'd call tweaks than changes. But as I mentioned earlier, even tweaks can make a big difference. The secret to building more traffic is still eluding me. I am open to any mentoring someone might have of the "big earners" in the Adsense world. http://www.wm8c.com

Technorati Tags: Google Adsense, Adsense, Internet Business, Making Money, Joel Comm, Adsense Code

My Green Beans are Gone! Raised Bed Gardening

I received a rude surprise Sunday morning as I went to the garden to do some weeding and fertilizing. I had planted pole beans about a week and a half prior to this and the last time I had looked (about 4 days earlier) they had just begun to peak through the soil about an inch or so.

Well I’ll be darned if when I got out to the garden, every one of the 60 or so bean plants I had planted weren’t eaten down to the stem. Something had eaten the tops of every last one of the green bean plant leaves and left a one inch high stem sticking out of the ground. It was kind of funny to look actually. The odd thing about it was the fact that all of the beans were gone, but the tomato, cucumber, squash, and swiss chard plants, were all left intact. Even the strawberries didn’t seem to be touched.

The first thoughts to cross my mind were the obvious things like caterpillars (the local tent worms or army caterpillars are on the move right now) and rabbits! Well I ruled out the caterpillar option as I didn’t see them anywhere in the garden and the job was too completely and neatly done for them to be the cause. When we built this home 11 years ago and I put in my first garden, I quickly realized that we had a very large rabbit population. They decimated the garden with their appetites that first year. The following year I put up 3 foot tall rabbit fencing around the entire perimeter of the garden and haven’t had a problem since then with them. I inspected the fencing in case I had a break somewhere but found nothing wrong with the fence. In the early spring, I did have a ground hog get into the garden somehow, but after scaring him to death while trying to get him back out of the garden, I hadn’t seen him since either.

Since I do “container or raised bed” gardening, I have paths between each of the boxes and it’s very difficult to see foot prints, but it had rained the evening before and as I looked closer, I found out who the culprit(s) were. What I found were actually “hoof prints”. Though slightly less plentiful than the rabbits, but just as marauding around our area are “white tail deer”. One must have been wandering our backyard and decided to stop by for a snack and it evidently preferred green beans. My fence was no match for them.

I simply decided to replant the beans and at this point I’m hoping that it was just a straggler looking for something to eat and it doesn’t happen again. They should be poking there heads up in a few days so we’ll see what happens then. I’ll just consider this a deposit to the fall “venison” stock for the freezer when deer season opens up once again.

A few gardening tips: If you live in an area of rabbits, always use the fencing with small holes to keep the varmints out. Container gardening allows you to plant denser quantities of vegetables per square foot of space and you never have to walk on your planting area. Also if you plant densely enough, the vegetables will crowd out the weeds instead of the other way around and cut way down on you weeding. You can do "raised beds" if you can't bend over with the same results as well. I will be adding information on this topic to my maiin site very soon. One last tip, Marigolds keep the tomato worms and and many other bugs away from your veggies so plant them along with your vegetables. Stop by my main site for more information on raised bed gardening. Happy Gardening! http://www.wm8c.com/square_foot_gardening.htm

garden, Raised Bed Gardening, Container Gardening

Starting a New Pond or Water Garden...

The Hills Are Alive!
This is an article that was written by a local paper about my water garden written in 2002, so I thought I would share it with you.

"Backyard Ponds & Waterfalls Are Music To Process Manager's Ears"

Todd, process manager for a local injection molder, is not one to make a mountain out of a molehill, but he's not one to take the easy way out either. When his wife, asked for a small pond and patio in the backyard of the family's home in Middleville, she had no idea that she was laying the groundwork for an elaborate landscaping project. Today, he maintains two large homemade ponds that flow into each other via a series of waterfalls and a 35-foot creek which he recently widened from six inches to two feet.

The ponds, which feature assorted vegetation including water lilies, iris, miniature lily pads, have been stocked in recent years with several Japanese Koi and dozens of large goldfish. "It's been kind of a love/hate relationship," Todd admits. "When the mosquitoes aren't driving you crazy, it's just a nice, calm place to spend your evening, just sitting there and listening to the water. "It's very relaxing and we get a lot of enjoyment out of it. But, boy, it's a lot of work, too. I suppose it's like any other hobby. You can take it as far or as little as you want to go."

He started the pond four summers ago. "When we first built this house seven years ago, the area was nothing but a big, brush-filled mess," he says. "We spent the first few years just cleaning everything out. "All my wife wanted was a small, preformed pond, but the land happens to have a nice slope and, being the Tim Allen type of person that I am, it turned into something more." He started digging the hole for the ponds with the help of his sons, Jeremy and Joshua, now 22 and 21, respectively. (He also has two younger daughters, Jessica, 19, and Tabetha, 15).

At the time he didn't realize that he was digging a proverbial hole from which there would be no escape. In fact, the whole experience has been quite an education. "Probably the biggest thing I learned is not to start so big — only because there's such a learning process in the beginning," he says. "There's a whole lot more involved to it than just digging a hole the size of the pond you want." His patience has been tried more than once. "We went through a ton of plants that first year because we didn't know how to take care of them," he says. "Water lilies can cost $50 apiece, so when you lose them, you lose a chunk of change each time."

Last summer, he lost all of his fish. "We were losing two a day," he says. "I never got an answer out of the water tests that I did, but I started fresh this spring with 50 goldfish." Besides widening the creek this spring, he went to a 4,800-gallon per hour pump (from 1,600) to create a more dramatic waterfall. He also added a second waterfall tier, plus a planter box at the end. He also enlarged the backyard patio area. Not surprisingly, the residence is on a tour of local homes with water gardens every summer. Early June is the time when the iris start blooming and the water lilies break the surface. "The unique thing about water lilies is they only last one day, although occasionally I'll have one open a second day," he says. He also usually puts in a half dozen hyacinths each spring. "They're so prolific that usually by the middle of July I'm pulling them out by the wheelbarrow full," he says.

There is always work to be done, whether it's feeding the fish twice a day or cleaning out the leaf buildup and sludge from the ponds. Even so, Strait says that he's probably not finished with the landscaping quite yet. "I plan to add one more pond," he says. "My wife only says that I should be ready for the extra work." At least now he'll know what he's getting himself into.
water garden

The Humming Birds have returned

One of my favorite birds to watch and photograph are Humming Birds. For one thing they are a challenge to photograph and for another they are just plain amazing little creatures. Ounce for ounce they some of the most aggressive little birds nature has to offer and they will fight each other literally to the death over territories if they see fit to do so. Most often it ends up just being a "severe argument" and they go about their business of eating and buzzing around.

Something I learned a few years ago is that they will return every year to the same spot to feed so if you have their favorite sweet water offerings for them available, they will come back to that spot year after year. Another thing I learned is that they will "sit" at a feeder and eat if you get the type with the perch and I definitely recommend you buy the types with a perch as it is so cool to see them sitting there eating (even their hovering antics are great too!).

Another thing you can do if you are trying to attract them is provide some flowers draw them in. I like to use Petunia's and we have the best luck with red, pink or purple varieties. They really like the flowers and the colors are endless. We usually plant them in the window boxes and this year we have a large hanging basket full of them on a post nearby as well and the Humming Birds showed up literally within days of hanging the feeder and basket out. I can sit by the window for hours and just watch them hover in and out. Get out your favorite digital camera and enjoy! http://www.wm8c.com/humming_birds.htm

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