I have talked back and forth with them as he was checking on the plants and received an email from Millers today and: "We will not have any Raven available this year. We are currently expanding our inventory and they will be available next year. Sorry we could not supply your needs. Please feel free to call me. We may have other varieties that interest you" It is a bit annoying as in the spring he assured me the plants would be available. Perhaps they are distributing none or perhaps larger orders trumped our less than 200 plant order, have no idea. For the west coast folks Fall Creek now has a license on the Ravens as well though they don't sell retail and have a 500 plant minimum. I did inquire of them on when they would be available. Sorry folks, I tried. I have had my 14 plant row tilled, irrigation in and ready for these things for well over a year now so to say I am disappointed is an understatement. This post was edited by bamboo_rabbit on Thu, Oct 24, 13 at 16:45

Great BB! I love the pink butterflies! And adorable in your flamingo garden. All in all you get an A+ in MY book! As for faded flamingos, you can always spray paint them with Krylon Fusion paint for plastic. I haven't noticed that it fades, so maybe you wouldn't need to repaint them yearly and turn them into "blobs" like excessfroufrou and her grandma did! (I'm LOLing imagining big pink blobs on top of spindly flamingo legs...LOL!) I've got a flamingo story to share...We lived in a "fancy" neighborhood one time and a new family who owned the local biker bar moved in. They put up an entire flock of pink flamingos and some neighbors were so horrified they started a petition to force them to remove them. Now, these people could have bought and sold ALL of the rest of us 10 times over, but the snooty neighbors were simply "above" bikers in their minds. When we refused to sign their silly petition, they got mad at us, too. Apparently they shared the petition with the owners of the flock who laughed it off. None of us realized how upset the anti-flamingo crowd was until one night somebody stold all the flamingos and CHOPPED THEM up into little pieces and threw them in the street in front of the house they came from. It could have gotten ugly, but the bikers were nice people who weren't looking for a fight. Nobody ever found out who actually "killed" the flamingos! At Christmas that year, Hallmark came out with the cutest flamingo ornament. I bought one for each of the neighbors...including the very nice neighbors who owned the biker bar! And, we have had flamingos of one type or another in our yard ever since!

Thanks everyone. The puffer fish was almost as fun to make as the octopus BB. Gotta keep that beachy theme going. My DH keeps wondering when I'm going to run out of ideas and just be "normal". Gee, all this time I thought I was, lol. susiewants roses-- the "waterplants" actually do sway with the breeze. Kathy & countrygrl-- yep its a BB, completed it weighs about 80 lbs. marlene-- lol, thanks for the compliment, my kids just refer to me as crazy. sunnyca & countrygrl-- I've found a new interest in PVC. Good thing the DH does underground const., otherwise I'd be in trouble! I sent a pic of this to my eldest son, he said he pities anyone that runs through the frontyard and trips into it, guess its a good thing I have a backyard for my grandbaby! Thanks again, have a creative weekend. lisa

Congrats on the bird life, Quietman! Here's hoping the HOWR's will be busy with their own nesting and leave the others alone long enough to get to fledging. The TRES will likely help with the defense. How fun to watch the killdeer! Have fun with your pond. My neighbor put one in last fall, and there were a lot of things they were not prepared for. They bought expensive coy fish, and herons ate them. Leaves fell in and fouled the water, the pump failed at least twice and the water froze, then the algae problem. Deer were walking in it, also fouled the water. They put a net over the whole pond, and some animal must have gotten caught in it and ripped it up. A groundhog dug a big hole underneath the berm and moved in; they fill it in, he digs it out again. A huge toad moved in. He's cute, but he keeps us awake at night, even with our windows closed. It's been interesting to watch it all. BlueBars