ltilton, Gosh, I'll be right over---I can trade you for tomatoes. And parsley! ;-p laceyvail, >> "People give up on their gardens much too early and miss many weeks of fresh food." Right on! There's a great bit in Elliott Cole's book about four-season gardening in which he tells about being in France and visiting a well-known garden in late fall. The tour guide keeps telling him, "In the real season there is x and y growing here; it is too bad you missed it!" and Cole keeps saying, "But, look, there's some right there!" he saw food all over the garden but the owners overlooked it just because it wasn't at its peak.... Annie, What, only one hem left to go? Progress!!! ;-) Z

Cathy, snow does not impact my outside decorating. I don't do any. Other people have it done by Thanksgiving or the snow is too deep. I wasn't going to put up a Christmas tree this year, but Ashley really wanted one so I caved in. I had given Amanda the angel for the top of the tree and all the tree lights because her lights quit working (that seems to be a recurring theme here, LOL) and the star that had been at the top of her tree quit lighting up. Surprise. So, I have no lights and no tree topper, but I'm creative. I found some green and orange halloween lights and when Ashley was in 2nd grade she made me an angel out of a toilet paper roll with doily wings. That now sits happily atop my 25 year old artificial tree with the Halloween lights. Can you tell that I don't care, I don't arrange by color and I don't pay anyone to decorate? Bah Humbug. I am kind of thinking that I ought to go drag up some more ornaments. I have about 20 on the tree now, I figured it was enough but Ashley thinks a 6 foot tree with 20 ornaments looks kind of bare. Elery says it's a "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree, LOL, it looks fine to me. Maybe I'll just buy a box of candy canes and use those and I won't have to go back into the basement until the day after Christmas when the blasted thing is coming down... Annie

I wasn't really recommending Euonymus. In fact, I never really felt drawn to them and their leathery foliage. They are nice enough as screening shrubs when you want some green and this fellow was already in the garden when I came. Husband was not overly impressed with what I had done, but he understood my need to expend ... what I was expending. I like the idea of Forsythia. My mother once gave me a cutting of one from some old and almost dead friend of hers. I confess that I am not sure what became of that cutting. But it was a drooping form of Forsythia, apparently. I wonder if you could find one like that. You could play with its training over time. Remember, any new leaf buds that are endeavouring to grow back and eventually form branches are easy to remove when young.

We talked to 4 lawyers today, and they ALL said his lawsuit would be considered frivolous, and that his case would be thrown out. And none of them believe he will actually go through with suing us. One of them called the xmas guy an idiot for even considering suing. One lawyer said our case would be a "simple" matter to handle, only one day of work @ $750. I talked to him at length. Basically, he would say to dismiss the case against us since we made an agreement with the property owner, and if the son had any theoretical agreement it would only be with his parents. But I know this guy, and I have no doubt he will still sue us. We bought security cameras last night. They're expensive! Holy cow! Xmas guy was outside and walked to the property's edge and made a spectacle of himself watching dh put the backyard camera up. If he was trying to intimidate dh it did not work. Xmas guy also came over this morning and measured the tree trunks of only 5 trees, because the other trees are totally on our property. He didn't measure the tree lengths which I found surprising. He did take pictures. We just barely missed him, as we were outside 20 minutes before him measuring the lengths of the trees and taking more pics. We screen-grabbed his facebook page; he sells them for $6 a foot. 2 of the trees we cut were only 3.5ft tall! The others were around 7-8ft. What does he think he's going to get? Even if we pretend he's the property owner, then we would at least be entitled to half the value of the trees since 50% of each of the trunks was on our land. He would get less than $100 total. He'd be a schmuck for suing. One last thing, I talked to the building inspector this morning and he said xmas guy called him late last night (Sunday!) and screamed at him, and that he had to listen to xmas guy even though he was out of town visiting family. He said xmas guy doesn't have a case and not to worry. That's all I can update for now. Thank you for "listening". It means a lot. I was up all night last night worrying about being sued.