My first reaction was like Flowerlady's: OMG, what has she done? And then I realized you had hired help to clean up and I sighed in relief. I admire those of you who are able to hire help who actually knows what they're doing and help you. I have yet to find anyone here that I would gladly let touch my garden... The old timers know about vegetable gardens only (and the use of lots of pesticides and herbicides) and the garden centers are mostly concerned with grass mowing (of which I have none) and formal hedge clipping (I only have informal hedges). Noone here knows anything about old roses or even rose pruning. They simply prune roses to ground level come January and call it a day. The lady who helps me with the house wanted to help me out with the garden last year, when I was so busy working in a company, and weeded one of my beds, without my knowledge and previous consent. She weeded most of my opium poppies which were short from blooming... She thought they were weeds... I almost had an heart attack when I saw that and told her, yet again and as politely as I could, that the garden was off limits to her. The works we have just done to the house were another source of garden stress to me, as to have a crew of masons loose in the garden was a tough number. They broke and destroyed a lot of things in the garden, partly because they didn't have much room to move and partly because they didn't even understand there was a live plant there - to them, any deciduous shrub which had lost its leaves was officially dead. It took quite a while to convince them that they were dormant (i.e. sleeping, so that they could understand). So... I'm glad at least some of you can hire help which doesn't destroy more than it helps. As for the acreage, I used to dream of a larger garden too, as my garden is a postage stamp lot. However, given the absence of reliable help and the cost involved, I have gladly forsaken it. This garden is a size I can reasonably maintain myself, if I'm careful with what I plant and balance stuff which requires cuddling with other easy maintenance plants. More than this would be unrealistic and I would have to let the garden go. When I'm no longer able to care for the garden, if it comes to that, I'll move to an apartment by the beach and call it a day :-) Eduarda

I bought a friend a basjoo 2 years ago and he protected it the way I told him, that following spring by the end of the summer he had 11 plants fron just that one, this spring when he uncovered, he has about 20 sprouting from the ground right now , now telling how many he will have the this fall , just from ONE plant , he couldnt believe it now he protects on a bigger scale, and even talking about moving some since he got so many last year fron 1 plant, I'll keep you all posted on how many he ends up with

Thank you. I hope it all goes smoothly. I ended up with the very first kitchen store that I went to. I wasn't crazy about the guy that came out the first time to measure. But this second time I ended up having one of the co-owners work with me and everything just fell into place. I think because I had so much more knowledge than when I started. But I also realized I needed to increase my budget to get everything I needed done. Everyone else just tried to work around my budget and left out ceiling work (hideous flourescent light removal) and all lighting and sink and faucet. But the best part was finding the cabinet color that I wanted so quickly this time around. I just couldn't settle on the color with the previous kitchen place.

Mazerolm, I don’t think that will work. Lady’s Mantle has separate stems for the leaves and flowers. You would just force it to make new leaves, while the problem is in the flowering stems. It is more for too tall late bloomers like asters and mums. Lady’s Mantle is a flopper, but maybe you can put some low twiggy branches around it, or sturdy other plants?