Wow, what a gorgeous front yard.I know your neighbors are injoying it too..Beautiful roses,you have.I wish I had you for a neighbor,instead of what I am stuck with :-) Thanks for sharing your gorgeous yard. Jean

Um, Gertie had a lot to say about spring bedding (and like William Robinson, most of it was bad) but funnily enough, the spring polyanthas slipped through the net. Both Munstead Wood and Sissinghurst, under Sackville-West, boasted 'primrose gardens' with carpets of multi-coloured polys. I have been doing much the same in our woods (given the obliging rate of spread for these little primulas). Throwing in oxslips, cowslips on the sunnier edges, and the japonicas and bulleyanas and p.wilsonii along the damper edge....and at last, I am in primrose heaven after 20 years of failure. Oh Flora - your photo illustrates the wisdom of raising from seed. A few years ago, the greedy and short-sighted (Lib-Dem) council sold off our municipal greenhouses (for a paltry sum - part of the tendering-out madness) and Cambridge, a fabulously wealthy town, now buys in carpet bedding from Holland -in mean and sparse quantities. Our floral displays currently look pathetic - acres of earth with a few measly little flowers. It gets worse in the summer with the usual pathetic petunias (compared to the innovative plantings of a decade ago). Given how poverty-stricken towns 'oop north' still have enough civic pride to enter (and win) Britain in Bloom and the like, Cambridge is an embarrassment, alleviated only by the bits of the colleges visible to the public ('the backs' etc.). For myself, as a northerner, I have a huge fondness for floral clocks and coats of arms rendered entirely in sedums and sempervivums and tiny pinks

Dax and Hair, me again, I just want to say that my "ooffer" is still hanging in there. Knock on wood (my dog), he is not wanting to eat, I force feed him kinda, he is only eating pure meat, and his sugar isn't usually high as a result of the mostly meat diet, but, he is going in the car for rides and coming up on the bed. He is going to be around a bit longer than expected, not sure how long but, we are taking his sugar, and giving insulin according to the blood sugar numbers. I am hoping for him to hang around as long as possible. He is still in kidney failure of course, but, we are trying to keep him with us until he is no longer having any fun (car rides) or being aware of his surroundings. His one side is sticking out, I am assuming from his kidneys, but, he is still aware and mentally present. As long as he is mentally present and happy, and can walk (however crooked his gait and slowly getting there) I am happy. Once he gets unaware of anything, and is not able to move himself, it will be when I will need to make hard decisions. He is about 170lbs now, and we won't be able to move him. If anyone thought good thoughts for him or wished him well, thank you, because he has bounced back sort of. I thought he was a goner again. I should've named him Pheonix.

Great quilts, Theresa! Funny that they have the same name. I started the first version using a bunch of 2.5" batik strips I had gotten in a scrap bag, but I didn't like how it was turning out so I quit. The batiks were all just the, I'll call them "blender batiks," and it looked too boring. I love the pattern though, and yours is lovely. I'll have to try again some day with other fabrics.