When our children were home one of our firm rules was "No TV during dinner." We stuck by it.

No one tells you when you're headed into the blended family situation what a minefield dinner can be. Everyone takes a stand on food. Well, not the husband. He's usually just thrilled not to be eating at the cafeteria. But it's hard to come up with dishes that all four kids like. We ate vats of spaghetti.

Even when we were trying new dishes and half the crowd was gagging and it wasn't exactly Ozzie and Harriet time -- no TV.

The day after our youngest went off to college, I gave myself a solid 30 minutes to suffer from empty-nest syndrome and then went right out and bought two sturdy lap trays for TV during dinner. A great example of "Do as I say, not as I do." We've seen some episodes of Seinfeld 50 times.

I'm always optimistic about the beginning of a new TV season. It's fun to have a show or two to keep up with.

My channel surfing has turned up way too many reality shows. Have you seen the one where the mothers changes families for two weeks? Why in the world would you let a film crew see you at your very worst?

And the plastic surgery shows? Besides the gross and pain factors, some of the results look like a step backward to me.

Don't get me wrong, I understand vanity.

Like everyone who watched any TV in September, I've given some thought to emergency evacuation kits. I'd never leave home without concealer, eyeliner and some control tops. You can bet after two weeks in a Red Cross shelter I'd be locked in the bathroom with some L'Oreal Medium Golden Brown. I know vanity.

I have a book called "Dirt on Her Hands." I've gotten some great ideas from the 18 featured gardens. Each one has a complete plant list.

The best, though, are the pictures of the gardeners. The gardens have evolved over many years and so have their creators. Besides some really rotten garden shoes, they have gnarly hands, lots of freckles and very deep wrinkles. They are lovely women.

Last week I had a visit with my first set of in-laws.

Mr. G is 94. He has spent his life in charge of their North Carolina backyard. His specialties are roses and irises and vegetables. Mrs. G., 88, has a mixed border, 100 feet by 5 feet that stops traffic. Years of weeding have put her in a back brace on bad days, but she can still touch her toes. The G's may be slowing down but they're not stopping.

Seeing those two in action -- weeding, dragging hoses, bossing their daughter when she helps in the yard, bringing in the harvest and putting it up for the winter, happily planning next year's garden -- is better than any reality TV. Their "after" pictures look like a million dollars.

I'm praying my reality will be a happy old face and a garden to match. Vanity is one thing, well-earned pride is another.

Some mornings, random travelers burst into Fred Taylor's apartment near Fincastle to find him still in his underwear eating a breakfast of toast and tea.

"They'd be sort of surprised to see me," he said.

Taylor does what any man would do at such a time. He offers them juice.

It is, after all, an honest mistake.

With a white Virginia Historical Highway Marker sitting in its bucolic front yard, the Breckinridge Mill is often mistaken for a museum.

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Taylor, 54, has dedicated much of his adult life to preserving the circa 1822 grist mill that sits beside Virginia 600 in Botetourt County. He figures that if he'd had a crystal ball to see all the time and money it would take when he first started 30 years ago, the mill might not be standing today.

"Being naive is sometimes a positive thing," said Taylor in his jovial, southern drawl.

Taylor inherited the mill, the miller's house and several other 19^th century structures on 100 acres in 1972.

At the time, he was a wanderer to places such as India, Africa and Spain.

By 1976, though, he'd grown weary of gallivanting. Taylor wanted a place to call home. He moved to the mill, which had sat unused for two decades and was unoccupied except for a family of owls.

Remnants of the mill's days as a chicken farm in the 1950s had also been left behind, along with lots of trash and dirt -- the kind of nastiness that would send most folks running. Taylor rolled up his sleeves and spent the next two weeks cleaning.

He wanted to turn the mill into four apartments. Tenants, he figured, could help him pay the mortgage that would be too steep for him alone.

Those were the days long before McMansions, SUVs and Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea invaded Botetourt County.

Friends warned that renters wouldn't be into living that far out in the sticks, but Taylor trusted his instincts. As the movie line goes: "If you build it, they will come."

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With architect John Morris, Taylor, who'd done construction and electrical work in college, hatched a plan to juxtapose the mill's grand history with modern sensibilities. He left the original corner fireplaces, exposed wood beams and rustic brick walls alone, gutted the rest of the interior and created loft spaces with 20-foot ceilings, skylights, track lighting and elegant hanging stairways of steel and oak. One apartment even comes equipped with a bidet, not exactly 19th century rural America standard fare.

"I really liked his style of making rustic comfortable," said Jennifer Ehalt, a 34-year-old marketing assistant who lived at the mill in the late 1990s. "It was by far the most interesting place I have ever lived."

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A believer that "if one is good, three is better," Taylor added a studio apartment off his workshop in the mid-'80s and converted the miller's house into a duplex in 1990. Built in 1895 and long abandoned, the house lay in such decay that Taylor had planned to demolish it, but the bulldozer driver he'd hired never showed up.

Seven years later, Taylor built the first of four cabins on his property. Though compact at 500 square feet, they offer an expansive view of the countryside.

The cabins rent for $630. The other apartments go, on average, for about $600.

Tenants have included a geologist, artists of all kinds, a nurse, teachers and writers. Hollins University graduate writing students frequently live at the mill, most notably in 2002 when a young writer traveled from her home in Mississippi to Fincastle via donkey in time for the fall semester.

Taylor likes the way his tenants make up a small community. He figures it's much like the way a village grew up around the mill in the 19th century.

Some tenants move to Breckinridge to fish nearby Catawba Creek. Gary Winkler and Katrina Landon, who've lived in the miller's house for seven years, grow a garden and raise Cotswold and Jacob sheep on the land. Ehalt took walks around the property every day.

"He was cool with letting the renters wander all over the land as long as you left the cows alone," she said. "It was very peaceful."

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Taylor, who describes himself as "pretty close to a hippie," takes a laid back approach to life. He can't bring himself to kill spiders in his apartment, because he figures their ancestors lived in the mill long before he came along.

Sometimes, though, Taylor has taken a stand. Recently a caller asked if he rented to dog owners.

"Usually," Taylor replied, and asked how many dogs the guy had.

"Five."

In this case, Taylor didn't say, "If one is good, five is better."

He turned the guy down, but said it would have been different if he'd wanted to move in with five ferrets.

"Ferrets make me happy."

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After his many years in construction, Taylor, who has a master's degree in tourism, is looking for a white-collar job. He could probably retire by selling the Breckinridge compound, which he guesses would bring a cool million.

But he's not about to leave the place he loves. He has become intimate with the mill in the same way a sculptor memorizes even the tiniest curve of a statue.

He lovingly points to a finger mark in a brick in one of the walls, marveling at how it likely was left by a slave.

In 1999, Taylor had the property declared a historic district through the Virginia Historic Resources Board. That means any owners have to get the board's permission before changing the exterior. Taylor wants future generations to be able to experience the mill, to imagine the people who lived there many years ago.

He worries about the looming energy crisis. Tenants may have to move into town if they can no longer afford the gas to commute to their jobs. With no renters, how will be pay his hefty mortgage?

But angels might have his back. After all, it seems a miracle that he's brought the mill this far.

He used to drive past a mill beside Interstate 95 on trips to Washington, D.C. One day he noticed it had burned to the ground.

Breckinridge Mill, he said, could easily have met the same fate. During the years the mill sat empty, hunters would set campfires inside it and shoot at their prey through a window.

"I feel lucky it wasn't lost," Taylor said.