Well, Ron, you have yourselves quite a project! I gained a better understanding of the situation once I found your blog with more details. The following experienced thoughts come to mind which may or may not be helpful. 1. Although you know suitable plants for this situation, none of them will choke weed growth and hand weeding will always be necessary. 2. It might be a good idea to add either bags of pine bark mulch or wood chips provided by a friendly arborist to your soil mixture. These will help to hold the soil and moisture breaking down slowly over the years as all stabilizes. Would urge you to do this. 3. It has been my experience that in the winter mice find this type of environment a cozy home, tunneling under the rocks and eating the roots of plants killing them. Hopefully you will avoid this problem. 4. Plant tight to rocks. This will encourage roots to grow down and under rocks seeking moisture which is usually trapped there. Also, the roots growing under rocks are protected from your harsh winters and will live to grow another year. 5. I like your planting plan as outlined on your blog. Good luck with this community project. Keep us posted, please, as your work progresses.

A rock garden should be informal. No matched pairs of rocks or lined out in a straight line. That also goes with the plants. If you are planting a corner where two sidewalks meet, the shape of the back should be curved. The rock garden should also not be level. Those are the basics as I see them. Here's part of my rock garden. Mike

It is multi-colored...browns and white. I live in Day, which isn't on the map, but near Rozelville. M and highway C. We drive highway C east to O and then south to boulder Junction. I saw him 2 times earlier this spring. My friend saw him and got the picture. He's about 5 miles north of Boulder Junction, on O and north of hwy 10. And the paulding lights....Are really neat. Just north of Watersmeet. Can't see it in the daytime...but at night if it's really quiet, the light comes very close. We went snowmobiling there 1 year...and in Jan. in zero weather, that light looked like it was 10 feet from us. and about the size of a basketball. other times it is about tennis ball size. There are a lot of legends. about it. Has been on unsolved mysteries too. Marcia

The 6pm news said 11,000 homes were forced to evacuate. Now they are saying only 500 were forced and it was "recommended" that 11,000 evacuatate. Here's a link to a Denver station with live coverage. We can see a lttle of the orange in the sky from here. I'm glad Max and Lee are ok, and that Lee continues to recover. I'm going to watch the 9pm news now. Here is a link that might be useful: Denver news coverage