What a sight! Robert and I had actually forgotten about it (I'm hopeless), but were finishing up some ribs on the grill for a late supper when BINGO, the moon rose above the tree line. Even though the horizon is obscured by the trees, and we could only see the moon after it had been in the sky for a while, it was still beautiful, big, brilliant!

Im gonna add one more thing, Kitchen. Dont keep watering the plants every day! When you do that the soil where the roots are stays wet all the time, so the roots dont need to grow deeper looking for moisture. Set your timer to do the 5-10 minutes every hour just one day a week. As the soil near the surface dries out, the roots will grow deeper looking for the moisture thats below them. Thats how you establish a really good root system. I think I remember your saying that a couple of your plants had literally blown out of the ground. When they establish that good, deep root system, you wont have to worry about that happening anymore. If the water is really soaking in deeply, you may be able to go even longer than a week between waterings, but start with that and see how theyre doing. I suspect they dont have a good enough root system yet to go more than a week right now. And your truly xeric plants, like the Russian sage, WANT to go dry between waterings. If you keep them wet all the time theyre gonna keep looking puny. Hlollars recommendation to only water them (deeply) once a month is really good. If you can turn off the emitters around your more xeric plants, and just turn them on for one good watering a month, I think youll be a lot happier with them. Are your boxwoods showing any signs at all of life? If they are, I recommend cutting them back pretty severely so you can get rid of any dead wood and allow them to reestablish. When you can post pictures we can probably get a better idea of what to do with them. Maybe they just need lipstick and nail polish! ;-) Skybird

Georgeous!!! I love beautiful sunsets, and you have the spot to watch that rivals most. Where in MN do you live? My sister lives in Minneapolis but she and her husband just bought a condo here in Phoenix for winters. Her husband grew up in Minne but we were raised in St. Louis and we both moved to Phoenix for jobs (a few years apart) until she met and married, then she moved to Minne with him. The only time we have been there was a few years ago for New Year's eve, the high got up to -2 degrees!!! She can work from home and likes to take walks, she comments on how beautiful they are, but I have never seen a pic! Thanks for posting!

Ours was gorgeous, too -- NE of Orlando. Pink and blue. We have some really beautiful sunsets here; waaay more than anywhere else we've lived.