Hi Everyone! We had a nice Easter. Everyone came over for dinner, and then we had the egg hunt and played Trivial Pursuit. We have one old and one new game, and we play in teams. Skip knows all the science, geography and history, but absolutely nothing about pop culture, so we had to mixt them together. We take turns asking questions from each box. That way everyone knows some sort of an answer. Devin had his birthday party Saturday night at the Fitness Center. We played dodge ball and swam in the pool. Yesterday I ordered Dahlias from Swan Island. I just started by getting a collection. LOW GROWING COLLECTION These varieites work great as borders. This collection contains: All Triumph (white), Bitsy (lavender), Firepot (Orange/Yellow), Mary Jo (peach), Matilda Huston (red), Park Princess (pink), Sisa (yellow). The varieties have blooms from 3" to 4" and the bush heights of under 3'. Then I ordered separately, CHILSON'S PRIDE (BBID) Introduced in 1984. 4" blooms of pure pink with white center. Bush height is 5'. and the other one was LADY LIBERTY (BFD) Introduced in 2003. An excellent exhibition flower, 6" blooms are pristine white with petals that fold all the way back to the stem. I really wanted to buy some lilies, but I have some of those already, and don't really have many Dahlias, except the ones I bought at Sam's Club last year, and I enjoyed them so much at the end of the season. I got an email from picture trail telling me the stats on my photo viewing, and they said 706 people viewed Bab's birthday card. Could there possibly be that many lurkers here? Maybe Babs just has loads of friends who she sent to look at it? V- Congratulations to your Daughter! How exciting! I hope your wrist is better. Sue, are you putting down a concrete pad for the hot tub, or a deck? Ours is on a deck, and it sort of settled a little crooked, so the water level wasn't straight across. I was pretty easy for Skip to fix. We have soft sandy soil. GB, I love that song. Deanne, hope you are feeling better. Mary, nice pulsatilla shot. Glad to hear you are recouperating. Marian, can you paint ticks with nail polish? Or is that chiggers? I know when we went up to the Upper Peninsula last year a couple of us got chigger bites. Taryn, I loved the video. I hope you sell your house this weekend. It's that time of year. Did I tell you guys I sold another one a couple of weeks ago? I really like doing real estate. Cindy, those are really nice photos. I have always wanted to go to DC when the cherry blossoms are blooming. That's about it for me. Hope you all have a great sunshiney day! D.

I have a similar problem with a dull period in my garden, although yours seems to be during bulb season, and mine is just after it. (I do have sandy soil, so I can plant most bulbs--no tulips, though!) That's too bad that the camassia died--when you mentioned moisture, I thought of them. I can't grow those either, but because my yard is too dry. Is your soil mostly clay? And what is your moisture and sun level for the whole growing season? (Maye you need plants that can handle spring moisture and summer dryness?) Something I'm doing in my garden is looking at the plants that are doing what I want, and then finding different varieties of that species, or similar species. You seem to have success with most of your columbines, so maybe add several new columbines--some may bloom earlier or later, and there are different flower shapes to add some variety. You could try that with some of the other successful plants, too. Siberian iris in different spots of the yard may bloom at slightly different times, and there are different colors. I really wanted to buy variegated iris, but at the nursery it was sitting in water with the other water garden plants, so I passed on it. Later I found out that it doesn't need that much moisture--but that may be why it's doing well for you. But you've found that you can't put it in a truly soggy location? I do have another idea to chew on: sometimes a plant won't be perfect for us, but blooming in a certain place, or a certain time of year, is good enough. Maybe your nepeta is too wide where it sits right now, but you could move it, or move the plants around it, and enjoy it more. And if the forget-me-not is reseeding too heavily, try pulling most of it (or snipping off the seed stalk) before it goes to seed. Those are things that bloom at the right time, and are surviving in your yard. There's work involved in nursing an ailing plant, and then replacing it, so I figure time spent holding back an "exuberant" plant is worth it, too. I (or others) might be able to suggest a couple of other plants to try once we know the conditions of your yard, and I hope some of these ideas help.

Up here in the mild PNW we can usually stretch the bloom period quite a bit on both ends...it's not the cold that stops it but the wet springs and late falls that tend to batter the plants into submission. That said, I usually get great results with my sedums...they are the first to re-appear in healthy clumps by the end of Jan, and I usually don't cut the seedheads until Jan when I see the new growth appearing. They look good in an architectural way all winter, and the birds love them. Another great plant for me is the cardoon...I can usually get 11 months of something out of it. The only time it's down and dormant is September, when I cut the huge flowers off and bring them inside so they don't seed all over the place. I cut the 7 foot tall plant down to the ground with a hacksaw, then by October it's sprouting new leaves and by Nov it's about a foot tall again. I've got lot's of herbs interspersed all over the place, and they do very well here, staying evergreen most of the year. Even the more tender ones will keep their leaves longer into the fall/winter as long as they don't get too wet feet. For blooms, my cape fuschias go pretty much for about 10 months of the year. My Bonica rose is the first to bloom in early March, and the last to stop in November, then it sets gorgeous bright red hips for Christmas. And it's completely no-care...I water it once or twice in the dead of summer, never prune it, never fertilize it, except for some compost, and it sits facing dead west getting blasted with full sun. This year I had purple wallflower blooming non-stop from early spring until Thanksgiving. As long as I kept trimming the spent flower shoots, it kept going. I was able to nurse a huge pineapple sage plant for 4 years...it never even showed a leaf until June, then in Oct when everything else quieted down, it took off, becoming a huge 4-5 foot tall/wide shrub. It would bloom in late Nov and all December, and the hummingbirds that stuck around loved it. It became my Christmas plant, with all the tiny red flowers. We then had a really bad wet winter last year, and that pretty much killed it off. I've also had great luck with a type of geranium...can't remember what it was, I think it's from South Africa. Produces huge 3-4 foot wide clumps, loves the hot dry sun, I water it once a month in the summer, and it's still covered with beautiful purple flowers as I write this in December. I filled in a particularly nasty dry spot between us and our neighbors, next to an evergreen hedge that sucks up every drop of water in the ground...not even weeds grow there. But those 3 geranium plants love it. I just cut it back to 6" in Feb when I do the other roses, and it takes off after the haircut. By combining plants, I'm able to have something blooming every month of the year here, even the dead of winter. In Jan, it's the osmanthum, by Feb/Mar the Korean spice dogwood kicks in, in Mar/Apr the Spring bouquet viburnum and the Bonica rose, and by April on the perennials start to bloom. We dug up the lawn, so it's all plants, and the neighbors in our fussy neighborhood love it...I'm weeding only once a week, while they're struggling with their lawns. For me, it's been learning to edit, remove plants, simplify, stick with multiple plants of the same kind rather than a patchwork of sorts. And as I get older, I can see myself replacing the perennials with more evergreen shrubs.

are morsag roses considered as baby roses,or they are roses similar to europeana roses,what are the diferences and similarities