Hello fellow buckeye! Here in Columbus, I am going to try sowing bottle brush buckeyes again this year. Last year I made the silly mistake of drying my seeds. Once the pods crack, those buckeyes are ready to go. Here's the problem for me, I have tried to grow Ohio Buckeye trees in the past and those darn squirrels dig them up and eat them every time. I have about a dozen of so volunteers in the yard every year from my neighbor's Ohio Buckeye, but that doesn't seem to satisfy them. This year I am growing in those black pots and putting a 2 liter bottle cut in half over the top. I hope that will hold them.

Tox I would like to know just what you consider clay. If I have a wet spot and till it, clay acts just like the stuff you used to by as a kid, gummy sticky and impossible to work as all you get a large balls of wet muddy clay. If you wait till spring and turn it over wet, when it drys you are fighting the equivalent of large dryed bricks that breaking to small dried bricka and turn a two hour job into a four hour job. I have dealt with this stuff since I was a kid and my father said I could help him in the garden. I made the mistake of turning the leaves into the wet garden one spring, as my dad said never to do(I actually did it again twenty years later, and by golly same misery) and spent the rest of the summer dealing with chunks of wet leaves and dirt instead of crumbly soil. I don't think you have ever dealth with heavy clay or black gumbo as it is called here and when you get below the black gumbo there is yellow clay that is twice as bad. I have the advantage that in the veg. garden I have worked in so many yards cubed of leaves, straw and weed piles three feet high and sheep manure that it is now the same dark brown color of my hair when dry, but in the rose garden all that has been added is left over leaves, Eucalytus mulch and now cocoa beans that the stuff is black as the ace of spades (when a chunk dries and breaks open it is actually a dark gunmetal grey-black, and when I roto-tilled between the rose bushes because I was annoyed that when I stuck a three sixteenth inch diameter weeder into the soil to get a big dandelion it would bend the weeder) I now have a weed free rose garden with ground that consists of thousands of inch to half inch diameter balls, for lack of a better description, but the roses are damned healthy.

Kate, I might be some help on a couple of issues. 2. The oleander. don't be afraid of cutting them back, it's impossible to kill an oleander. When you say 'not growing to your satisfaction', what do you mean exactly? Not the right shape? You should be able to whack at will at these plants. 3. The bougainvilla. It HATES to be babied. Leave it completely alone, no fertilizer, little water. I recently cut mine all the way back to its main trunk, and I do this every year about this time because it's cold sensitive. Then I ignore it. Don't even make eye contact with it :-) .... next year it will be back in all its glory. For fertilizer, I like to mix up a 5-gallon 'cocktail' of Superthrive (just a few drops) and iron chelate. The chelate will stain the bucket so use one you don't care about. It takes about 3 weeks to see results but this is really good for plants that are losing their green-ness. My other favorite is liquid seaweed. HTH, and maybe someone else will chime in with suggestions as well. Good Luck. Mary

I second High Country Gardens - You'll actually be able to go right to the source as they're based in Sata Fe! Lucky You! I'll post a link to their local business, known as Santa Fe Greenhouses. High Country Gardens is their Mail-Order Business. As for plants, don't worry too much - I grow a very healthy ligularia, of course it's got it's very own dripper - and you wouldn't want a whole yard full of them - but as an accent plant, you can still grow some of the more water hungry varieties. Just don't plant a too many of them, and put them on their own drip zone. I usually call this zone my "oasis" and it's right near the front porch where I can enjoy these unique plants every day when I come and go to work. I'm lucky my house faces East so this area is also shaded during the intense late afternoon sun. Which brings me to another idea, use what micro-climates you may have to maximum effect. It will definitly increase the variety of plants you can select and should also help to lower your water usage. Welcome to NM and Congratulations on your new home! Here is a link that might be useful: Santa Fe Greenhouses