Hi Socks - I set it up myself...well, my six year old son and 12 year old daughter helped a bit...pretty easy. Now, I am definitely not as confident in my ability to get it to pop 'down'...we'll see... I am mostly concerned about squirrels and chipmunks, I think. They just tear into everything around these parts. One summer they used every singly seat cushion on my deck furniture chairs to pad their nests! I really despise them. Maybe they won't be interested in this (I hope). Not sure what to do to keep them away, really. So, I am trying to extend the amount of time I keep a bunch of my cacti and succulents outdoors, rather than jamming them into my sunroom this year. That way, I may try to segue them into a dark dormancy in my garage instead of the sunroom - giving them a deeper sleep perhaps AND freeing up growing space under HID lights in my sunroom. They just wouldn't get the same dry cold in the sunroom that I think I can give them with the greenhouse - maybe end up with better flowering next year, too? By the end of November, I think they will all be indoors somewhere - either garage or sunroom. Then, the snows come...seems so far away with 90s forecast all week for us ;-). Josh - I see what you mean...just hope it doesn't get overtaken by marauding banditos! T

Thanks Carol, sea myrtle sounds cool; think I'll keep it around. I found some packages of Ball freezer boxes awhile back in a thrift store; so I've been blanching and freezing green mixtures for a bit now. Need to do some more this week. I put greens in just about everything. Later this week I'm going to make a crockpot lasagna where I use layered green in lieu of pasta for the lower layers. I will let you all know how it turns out. I'm am so pleased to be having tomatoes getting ripe. Starting tomato seed in November turned out to be one of my better bright ideas. It was just a few pots so carrying them in and out wasn't too much. Having early tomatoes now is so worth it. The fountain is so nice, can't wait to get all finished around it. Hopefully today I will bring home a few small pond fish. I moved some of the bright lites chard over near the fountain. It was going anyway from being in full sun; so it will be interesting to see if it stays perennial in the dappled sun. And for now, it brings some color to the area. I've also got some Florida Variegated Collards that I'm going to plant over here and see how they do. They are also suppose to be perennial. Not that I think they would taste all that good in August. Thanks for the compliments everybody .... blush ~dianne

Thanks. Guess I'll just let it be through the winter and see what happens in the spring. It's been growing since Feb/March ish with no flowers. Other coreopsis in that bed bloom and reseed with abandon. They bloomed like crazy, went to seed and died back months ago but these haven't done anything. It doesn't bother me to let them be for now. I just didn't want something that was definitely and invasive weed and take over the bed.

Gertrude Jekyll, Austin Happy Child, Austin. The little white flowers are clover I use to enrich the soil with nitrogen to feed my roses. I use various other nitrogen-fixing plants in my garden to try to make my roses self-sufficient. Jenny Duval, gallica, and friend. This is yet another! Jenny Duval sucker that has popped up in the middle of other roses. She's quite the colonizer. Yellow clover with Salvia apiana Pentstemon spectabilis with lots of other wildflowers in the background, most of them are California natives. I wanted a wild flower meadow in my front yard and it is certainly wild looking! The light pink low growing rose next to the bird bath is Souvenir de la Malmaison from Rogue Valley Roses. It's in a fair amount of shade so it doesn't get very big. The climbing rose in the crepe myttle tree is supposed to be Baty's Pink Pillar (from the Antique Rose Emporium) but it doesn't look like pictures of that rose. It looks very much like SDLM but without scent and climbs into multiple trees up to around 30 feet! It is sharing the crepe myrtle with a California morning glory (pink flowers, not really visible these pics) and virgin's bower (white flowers, not blooming yet). Marchesa Boccella from Antique Rose Emporium Someone asked earlier about not seeing photos of some of these old roses, especially in Southern California. The secret with these old garden roses, the once bloomers, in this area is not to feed them. If I fertilize them (with a chemical fertilizer, such as a timed release one for instance), they will not bloom. At all. I suspect the reason has to do with something we have too much of in our water (my local botanic garden experts warned of this toxicity (boron) in our water) and if it is then given again to these roses, they can't handle it and shut down. I don't know for sure it is the boron, but fertilizing is a bloom killer on these ogrs. Happened last year to many of my old garden roses as I was very, very ill in 2017 and used a timed release fertilizer spring 2017. I knew better but I felt too weak to carry around watering cans of fish emulsion. Most of my once bloomers had not a single flower in 2018, including the very reliable Felicite Parmentier. When they'd been bursting with flowers every year prior (unless fertilized--lesson learned). Back to normal this year. If I feed at all (and I usually give nothing) I use very diluted fish emulsion. I haven't gotten around to that this year--too much work!