I'd suggest you search the archives of the Landscape Design forum for threads regarding home use design software - this discussion comes up frequently. The consensus is that 95% of it is worthless, with some that offer photographic modeling possibly helpful but with a generally deceptive appearance in the result produced. Even professional designers disagree on the value of design software, with many preferring hand drafting and rendering but those who use it lean heavily toward the very expensive, high learning curve CAD programs. Landscape software is a tool, much like paper and pencil is to a designer or spade and pruning shears to a gardener. Unless you have the skills and knowledge to use the tool, it's not going to be very helpful. 5 acres is a lot to organize and plan for - it could be intimidating to even very experienced gardeners to immediately get their hands around such a large chunk of land with widely varying growing conditions. There are a number of very well written home landscape design books that can help provide direction. Most will take you through a step by step process in how to evaluate your property and define your needs for it. They will also explain basic landscape design principles and how you can incorporate them to give your garden structure, flow and unity. This may seem a little esoteric to begin with but hang in there - there are very valid reasons why designers and these home landscaping texts refer to these principles and use them in developing a design. One that I'd recommend highly for the layperson homeowner is Better Homes and Gardens "New Complete Guide to Landscaping", typically available at the book/magazine area of Lowes or HD as well as various book stores and retail garden centers. I refer to this text in my landscape design classes and most homeowners have found it very useful and easy to follow and understand. Invest a few bucks in a good design text book and a camera and get hold of some gridded drafting paper and pencils and start making some plans. For a 3 dimensional effect you can always do tracing paper overlays of existing photos (digital or not), adding plants and features to see how they fit in the scale of things. It's not as difficult as you might imagine and the act of drawing out scale plans with mature sizes of plants carefully delineated will give you a much better sense of impact of the garden over time than inevitably deficient home design software will provide.

Nope, no one to plant sit. I'll probably start about 6 early girls on the 20th since I have plenty of seed. I usually plant around 100 seed, different varieties, mostly heirloom. I plant around 20 in the garden and give my coworkers the rest. I thought about asking one of them to plant sit, but they all live 20+ miles away.

plllog -- yep, reset the bookmark, and it seems to be working. In the olden days, you know, last week, I only signed in when I wanted to post (laughable, I know, like I'm actually privatizing my forum trail and someone cares) and I could just use That Home Site Forums - Gardenweb menu to look at Kitchens, Cooking, etc. If I want my topics now, I have to sign in; otherwise, I'm sent to the Garden Forum. It makes sense signing-in, I get it, but I just need to grumble a bit. And I'll whisper: this change and not knowing what the end of net neutrality is actually going to mean, makes me want to grumble, grumble, grumble a bit more:) On a positive note: I thought I was too old to learn new tricks; yet, a new talent that I've acquired is filtering out the peripheral, intrusive, embedded nonsense on the sides, top and bottom of my screen/phone. Advertisers think I see their stuff, but I don't:0) CathyinSWPA

This is when I'm so glad we live in the country. After we moved here in our mid-20's is when we got our first dog. I can only remember two instances when dog barking was a problem. When I used to babysit DS1's children from birth to 4 or 5, it was at their house in the country about ten miles from us. UPS always delivered packages (ringing the doorbell then leaving) during nap time and both of their Shih Tzu's would yap and yap and yap. Always woke the kids up, and me too. :) I finally put a note on the front door asking them not to ring the doorbell because of children sleeping. They never did it again. Now this story really burned my hide & I had no choice but to find humor in the situation. Living in the country and having indoor/outdoor dogs, they'd bark when they'd hear something or see a critter whenever we let them out to potty. DS1, his family, and the two Shih Tzu's, built a house behind us. I believe it was the first morning when DS1 had to go to work after the move. He gets up a 5am and leaves at 6am. He needs his sleep. At the time I was waking at 4am, and the first thing I had to do was let the dogs out. While they were out I had to go to the bathroom, and the dogs started barking very loud because they're big. The phone rings and it was DS asking me if I'd get the dogs in the house so he can sleep, plus they were waking up the kids. Now we have to watch their barking in the early morning hours and after bedtime for DS1's family. Neighbors, how dare they! :)