HAT, I don't think many gardening magazines promote themselves as being necessarily a "how-to" publication but rather a source of ideas and inspiration, that can be adapted to your specific climate and location and personally, I think Fine Gardening fits that bill rather nicely. I'm surprised you didn't get valuable input from the listing of "high-powered" perennials, most of which are hardy in any area of the country, plus the Southwest regional report would include those suitable for growing in Colorado and high desert areas. These regional reports vary from month to month and often include a Rocky Mountain variation. And then there is all the garden design information, which, aside from plant selection that is more site-specific, provides some great ideas. I though their presentation of paving materials and walkway examples very well done as was the article on how best to combine and use variegated plants. Sure, maybe not all those plants would be hardy for you, but the techniques and design elements involved transcend location. You may want to check out Sunset Magazine. This is a west coast publication that addresses all of west, including the high mountain areas and the southwest. They publish regional editions that are directed towards specific areas, including a Rocky Mountain edition. This is not a totally gardening-oriented publication however - it will include food, enetrtaining and living articles in addition to regionally appropriate gardening articles. Sunset also publishes a whole range of gardening and landscaping books.

I like Garden Compass, formerly Over the Hedge. It is based in San Diego, published by Bruce and Sharon Asakawa of the Saturday and Sunday morning radio program. The magazine has evolved from a poorly edited, but useful magazine to a beautiful glossy useful publication. This month's issue has a wonderful piece written about Cal Poly's Leaning Pine arboretum. In addition to featuring botanical gardens around the state, they have very nice articles on what grows well in all parts of our state. I have discovered some great plants, trees and techniques through this magazine. I also get Organic Gardening, and they are very slowly learning there is a Mediterranean component to the U.S.

I absolutely love using the library's online features! With 3 small children, I either have to make an extra trip down to the library after they are put to bed which doesn't give me much time before the library closes or I have to try and keep them quiet in the upstairs adult section which doesn't usually work very well. Imagine VERY loud voices asking questions like "Why do they have so many computers up here?" "Why do we have to be so quiet?" "When is it time to go hoooome? *whine*" Once I realized how easy it is to do things online, I started using it all the time. I can renew our books online so that I don't have huge late fees. I can put things on hold at our library like popular DVDs or new releases. They are always on hold for someone so it's much easier to get my name on the hold list than it is to find it on the shelf. And of course, the interlibrary loan system is great! I've found so many books using that. Besides the ones I was looking for, I've also found some by using the features "nearby items on shelf" and "find more on these topics". They have a pretty nice setup. Our library also has an ongoing used book, magazine, and CD sale near the front desk. I once found a whole stack of gradening magazines like Garden Gate and Organic Gardening for 25 cents each! And you can check out magazines also. In fact, I just quick bumped over there and put the last 4 issues of Garden Gate on hold (from Waterford library). Oh, and Julie, if you do a search using the words "fine gardening" that magazine is available at Burlington library plus a few others so if you need some reading material this winter but don't want to shell out the money for a magazine that you only read part of, it can be transferred to the Racine library for you. There is also a series called "Fine gardening design guides" that seems to have been put out by the magazine along with a few separate books titled "The Best of Fine Gardening: Perennials", "The Best of Fine Gardening: Shrubs and Trees" and a few others. Does Sturtevant have a library or do you use Racine's? If the bookmobile comes out near you, you have the option of choosing where you want to pick up the items and can switch it to Bookmobile. It's funny, most of the libraries only seem to keep the last 2 years of issues but West Bend has copies of Fine Gardening going back to 1997! I wonder why? Perhaps they have more gardeners in that area or just most storage room. There's a new book by Melinda Myers titled "Month-by-month gardening in Wisconsin : what to do each month to have a beautiful garden all year". I'm going to have to put that on hold. I wonder if they have Birds and Bloom magazine. Well, I'm going to quit bouncing back and forth between websites and just send this before it gets any longer. Kimberly P.S. My library's SHARE program covers these areas: Dodge, Jefferson, Racine, Walworth and Washington Counties. But I'm sure there are similar programs for the other parts of...

emagineer - This is from the blog Cote de Texas that I provided a link to in my post. Since it's been all about "Something's Gotta Give" I thought that Nancy Meyers' follow up movie "The Holiday" needed a closer look. Just as the star of Something's Gotta Give was the Hamptons house itself, the star of the "The Holiday" wasn't really Cameron Diaz or Kate Winslet, but their two homes, one in Los Angeles and one in the English Countryside, respectively. And in another connection between the two movies, the production team was led Jon Hutman - but Beth Rubino, so wonderful on the set of SGG, was absent for The Holiday. And just as with Something's Gotta Give, Nancy Meyers' personal interior designer has photos of "The Holiday" houses on his web site, but he is not mentioned in the film credits. The Holiday, coming so soon after Something's Gotta Give received a lot of prepublicity hype concerning its premise: two women swap houses for the Christmas vacation and both find love. For lovers of the SGG house, a new Nancy Meyers movie about TWO houses was almost too good to be true ! Jim