That is so great! I saw the first swallowtails on my new butterfly bush today. I was so excited, the the hummingbird fley by me, she had been drinking nectar from the purple duranta erects flowers. There was a black swallowtail on the fig tree, I have no idea why it was there. And momma bluebird was perching on the outside of the house feeding her babies. It was a great day! kay

Hi putzer, I have a 300 gallon stocktank that I've sunk into the ground. It doesn't have shelves. I'm glad for that, since hopefully the coons will leave things alone....but they would be nice for the little guys who fall in. I wonder if pieces of styrofoam would work, until the plants get big enough for them to hold onto.......like little life preservers?

How beautifully and tragically said. He was so fortunate to have you in his life. I hope you find some resemblance of peace in your life. We lost our grandaughter yesterday at 7 months gestation. My DIL is going through induced labor to deliver her at this very moment. Right now I am numb to my feelings about the baby. My heart aches for my son and his wife. I can't imagine what they are going through.

Lisa - your comment made me laugh! Yes, all that "seeing him nude" and "stripping him naked" did sound very naughty - hahaha! No, our winters are too mild really (we're still getting up to 20 C (68F) in the daytime sometimes and it only goes down to around 8 - 10 C (46 - 50F) at night so to be honest, none of the roses were going dormant. They were still setting buds. But with Spring coming in Sep just around the corner, we sort of have to force them into dormancy ;-) A few of the roses do drop some leaves - but mostly, you have to strip them all off by hand. (You can see from the 2nd photo above - that's what Pierre looked like last week, still completely covered - so all of that had to be removed yesterday! The training was actually a happy accident due to my newbie anxiety - haha! I didn't realise that climbers have canes that remain lax and can be tied up later - the rose people here in Perth told me they just let the new shoots grow wild and then tie them all in properly after pruning, when they can see better. But I thought if I didn't train them as they grew, they would "solidify" into the wrong shape! So I was there wrestling with Pierre all through the growing season, tying & retying him to the fence as he grew. I have a LOT of thorn pricks & scratches to show for it - haha! But it did mean that when it came to pruning yesterday, the guy who was helping me said that I'd done a good enough job with the training so we didn't need to re-tie any of the canes at all. :-) Funnily enough, I've discovered that I really enjoy training things (probably a masochistic tendency - hah!) and I'm now looking for more climbers to grow in my garden! Sadly, not roses as I'm out of sunny walls - but I'm looking at clematis and any other climbers I can find. Oh, and I've just planted lots of sweet pea seedlings. It's my first time growing them - I've never seen them in "real life" - so I'm excited! HY