Karen, I too decided to keep the pink and white hydrangeas. I just admire pictures of the blue hydrangeas on this site. Cowgirl, thanks for the suggestions, not sure if the sump will work in this site since this is the main entrance to the garden and I don't think my dad would be up for it (it's his house, my garden since I live in the city). Plans to get an area re-tuckpointed are underway, as well as the French drain. Gutter extenders and some grading will also help. We are using this as an excuse to re-vamp some of the landscapping that has overgrown some areas, so we are looking forward to it. Junipers, while nice and evergreen, are over done here and are looking to replace them with flowering perrenials. Around the house in full sun, junipers are just too much, so out with them and in with the roses, and clematis!! Finally, we can have the full-sun perrenial border I have always wanted. Based on my readings, it seems that the decomposing mulch does add organic matter to the soil, but drastic changes in pH are not possible. I was under the impression that decomposing plant matter can acidify the soil, but it seems that only pine needles, and oak leaves can do that. Since we had a few warm days this weeek I was digging around the house and noticed that some areas were much more "organically fortified" than others, so before our landscape re-design, I plan to get as much mushroom compost, manure, and fallen leaves I can find to enrich all the beds. For the hell of it, I snooped around some of our neighbors landscapping and the soil is like wet cement, at least I can easily get my finger in the soil on our property, so the wood mulch has done something over the 8+ years it has been down. My dad (OCD) likes to pile the mulch on really thick in the front borders and I think that it inhibits the breakdown since there is an area 3" under that looks brand new. I think we are going to just "fluff it up" in the spring instead of getting a truckload, lol. Thanks to all the suggestions.

I second the suggestion for the waterhog mats. I'll post where we purchase them if I can find the link - you can get custom sizes, colors, styles, etc. LL BEAN sells them too but they are very pricey IMO. We use them around our dogs water bowls too since they are sloppy drinkers. In addition to our entry way, we also use them in the back of our SUV's in the cargo area since we travel with our Boxers. Keeps the truck nice and clean and absorbs liquids. After my dog had surgery he peed in the truck on the drive home from the vets office (post-anesthesia, if I remember correctly) and I was thankful for that waterhog mat. Not a drop of urine on my upholstery; the waterhog captured all of it, and it was easy enough to clean -- I sprayed it down with a hose and some cleaning solution, left it out to dry and no residual smell whatsoever. They're awesome mats.

I had med-dark floors and what made them look dirty was the sheen! I believe chinchette. They were engineered wood and they were so smooth you could see footprints in sunlight with CLEAN feet right out of the bath not even wet. Drove me nuts. I've been wanting to go with real wood (handscraped with a little tonal variation to hide dings/scratches). I may consider engineered if I can get it in a matte finish, because the engineered held up beautifully in my previous kitchen, and I'm worried about a true hardwood in that area. It will be one or the other, I love wood floors. My friend had a darker almost espresso floor, now those you had to dust all the time to keep looking clean.

So it looks like both the batch outside and the batch inside are doing well. Both have pretty vigorous top growth now, so I believe they have roots. The batch inside is in coarse sand, so at the end of this week I will actually take them out of the sand and put them in individual pots. I'll know then for sure if they have roots. So the results of my hardwood cutting "experiment" are: (Note, batch 1 came from a different crape myrtle than batch 2 and 3. This is just one example of how this is not a controlled experiment. But it is instructive and confirms the common knowledge as well.) Batch 1. Dormant hardwood cuttings of crape myrtle were harvested and then immediately treated with rooting hormone and put in peat and perlite indoors under light. All these cuttings seem to have eventually failed. About half put out leaves, but stopped growing there, and then died. Batch 2. Dormant hardwood cuttings of crape myrtle were harvested, then soaked in cold water for 48 hours. They were then wounded, treated with rooting hormone, and planted in a garden bed outside while it was still winter. Half were stuck with about 1/2 of the cutting in the ground. The other half were stuck with only 1 node above ground. Several weeks later they came out of dormancy and are now growing vigorously. 100% have put out shoots above ground. The ones that are buried all the way except for one node are growing faster. Batch 3. Dormant hardwood cuttings of crape myrtle were harvested, then soaked in cold water for 48 hours. They were then kept in the frig in moist spagnum moss for about 3 weeks. Thereafter they were stuck in coarse sand after a rooting hormone treatment. These were not wounded at the time of sticking due to some evidence of root nodule formation which I did not want to damage. They were kept in a cold, dark garage with bottom heat until they unexpectedly started to bud out. At that time they were brought inside and put under lights. Although the cuttings that have budded out are now growing vigorously, about half of them have not come out of dormancy at all.