Thanks so much everyone! So happy you like the photographs! Denise, yes, that's a variegated Solanum jasminoides in that container. The plectranthus is 'Lemon Twist', is that the variety you lost? Would you like me to send you cuttings? I've got piles and piles of that plant right now and most of it is going to go with the first frost. ~~ Garden coach? Sounds like something I'd like to do. I"ve never heard of that before. Is it a CA thing? Cynthia, yes that's a Phygelius that Wendy gave me last year. I just love that plant! Chelone, you are a hoot, 'subterranean bomb shelter'.... ROTFLOL - although, I've been REALLY wishing I had a greenhouse this year. Monique, you know you are welcome to visit any time. I'd love for you to see the containers before the frost hits. Deanne

Hi le Jardin, we moved here for several reasons.. my partner is English and had a career opportunity, I wanted the chance to go back to school, and we have family here. I've always loved England anyway, so I was actually more excited than my partner! I love it here. Hi Diane, thanks for looking at the photos, I'm really glad you enjoyed them. Hi albertine, Yay! Another corgi fan. I've had two as well and they really spoil you for other dogs (although, there are many others that I love as well). We see a lot of Jack Russells, Greyhounds, Westies, occasionally an English Bulldog or a Bull Terrier. There are also some type of herders that I'm not familiar with that remind me of skinny versions of Australian Shepherds. If I ever see Lilac Rose looking lonely at a garden centre, I'll probably go ahead a pick her up anyway, but she's not something that I'm going to seek out, there are far to many recommended roses to get first! Andrea! We really have to meet up, I think you might be my soul sister! :) I picked up Mr. Fairchild and Alan Titchmarsh together last autumn, the first to roses that I purchased here. I have mixed feelings about A.T., like your', mine tends to have such heavy flowers that they go right to the ground. On the other hand, there are so many of them! For a first year rose mine must have produced 30 or so roses so far this year. I noticed that if I let the branches hang, like pegging I'm getting new shoots popping up and already there are buds on them too, so I'm just going to let him do his thing and see how it goes. Mr. Fairchild, by comparison, has been less vigourous; but I much prefer the flowers, scent, and bush shape. I really like this rose. Wow... going through your wonderful list: I grew Gertrude in California and didn't really like her. I smell some scent, but my nose doesn't register the scent that everyone else raves about. I had the same problem with Comte de Chambord, so I guess I'm just not wired for that group. Shirifa is in a nice pot, I am hopeful. Jude I adore, I'll have him again soon. Lady Emma Hamilton really surprised me at Austin's, not my colour, but I loved the scent. Summer Song is totally out of my colour range, I wish I had smelled it though.. bananas!?! I really liked Young Lycidas, it is one that needs to be seen in person to really get the subtlety of the colours, and yes.. WOW, what a scent! Love WM2k, so so about Golden, but love the Prince. This is one of my favourite photos of him from my California garden: I saw Dark Lady and Prospero for the first time this trip, both nice but undewhelming. I really liked Munstead Wood. Also saw Radio Times for the first time, it was nice but didn't bowl me over. Now, I had the Alnwick Rose high on my list, but was disappointed in the scent! I chose Sceptre'd Isle over it this year during my small bareroot purchase, and had been wondering if I had made the wrong choice. The way you describe it though, I really out to love it, so maybe it was just the wrong time of day, or I had been overwhelmed by other scents. I grew Evelyn in California and I liked her delicacy very much. I've yet to meet Ab Darby, isn't that strange!? Princess Alexandra and Jubilee are the two top on my list right now, I'll keep my eye out for Rosemoor. Gentle Hermione is the other bareroot I ordered this spring, and she just had her first flowers this week. I like her, and true to Austin's word, she held up beautifully in the rain this morning, and even held water in her cup through the whole day without falling over or apart. I used to grow Tamora as well, but in California it was a rust magnet, I swear it was nearly copper coloured by the end of the season. Thanks for sharing your list, it's helped reassure me about several choices that I'm interested in. Here's a shot of Tamora and Evelyn: Carla, it's so kind of you, thanks for the good wishes. Here's a hug for you... (((Carla))). Hi Joanne, it's nice to see you! Apparently they have redone the "Lion garden" and will grow roses with perennials, thank goodness, as much as I like roses I much prefer them mixed with other roses. Mottesfont is still the gold standard for me. Megan thanks you, and sends best wishes to Maggie. Hi Aliska 12000, thanks for looking, and good luck with your Wisley, ultimately, it really comes down to each of our gardens, what does poorly for David Austin might be a gem for someone else. That's a lovely photo! Hi Sue, thanks for your good thoughts, they are much appreciated. Thanks Beth! Cheers everyone! I'm delighted that you have enjoyed these photos.

Hi everyone, Thanks for commenting on the pics--I really appreciate it and I'm glad you enjoyed it. Aren't those zinnias great? They're virtually foolproof for summer color as long as they get occasional water (but like I said, I do head out of town a lot even in summer and they have to survive w/o automatic irrigatin). Let's see...since these pics do not show my Tree of Shame (which now has twenty one baskets it in), I can reply with what's hanging in the tree in pic #2. Thanks for asking...there are three pots of cascading vinca ('Mediterranean Apricot Broadeye' which I started from seeds from Park Seed Co...it cascades wonderfully), there's a pot with one of the "mule's ears" kalanchoes (Kalanchoe gastonis-bonnieri), a lantana (I stand firm as a fan of them, lol), a blue flowering puya (Puya berteroniana that I also grew from seed (what can I say? I'm cheap!)), and if you look closely, at the left, you can see some spaghetti-like stems dangling in the air...that pot is actually hung so high (16 feet) that you can't see it, but it's full of Rapunzel plant, Sarcostemma viminale which almost touches the ground now (I had to hang it by standing on a very tall ladder and I have to arc water up to its pot with the hose once a week), and finally, the dark bronze-purple plant does indeed look like purple hearts from this distance, but it's my new favorite ornamental sweet potato 'Sweet Caroline Bronze' which stays compact and makes great bronzey-burgundy leaves which emerge a golden chartreuse, AND it loves full sun. I know, I know...more than you wanted to know, but hey, you asked. :) Now, just don't make me list what's hanging in the Tree of Shame...that would take all day. :P Take care and thanks again for commenting, Grant Here is a link that might be useful: Mediterranean Apricot Broadeye from Park Seed

Most tomatillo varieties need two separate plants for cross-pollination in order to produce fruits, but I know people who've gotten a great harvest from only one plant. It may be the bees found another tomatillo plant in another garden somewhat close by or even a wild tomatillo plant (we have them here, though I don't see them often) and carried pollen to the lone tomatillo plants that did produce a harvest. Sometimes tomatillos are just really late so I wouldn't give up on it yet. When I grow tomatillos from seed, I transplant 6 into the garden, but in the space I'd allocate for only two. Then, as they become established and grow, I remove 3 of them and leave three. Once they've grown enough that the plants are starting to get crowded, I cut down one of them and leave two. That's the best way I've found to ensure I get two plants to maturity because if I plant only two, sometimes always seems to happen to one of them. One tablespoon of Dr. Bronner's soap in one gallon of water shouldn't harm the foliage of any plants, although I've never sprayed soap on anything above 90 degrees (well, not in many years) because I know that soap sprays + high heat can result in damaged foliage whereas soap sprays of the same concentration in lower heat will not. I think our horrible heat may finally have broken, although we still hit 99 degrees three days in a row this week, and on a couple of these cool days we still had the highest temperature (tied with several other Mesonet stations) in the state, so our cool-down hasn't been as strong down here. That is typical though. Geographically we are much closer to Dallas than to OKC so our weather is much more like the Dallas weather than the central Oklahoma weather. That is true this year. Dallas has had almost exactly the same weather we've had----going from intense flooding for a couple of months to hot, dry, no rain and high fire danger in the blink of an eye. Sugar Baby doesn't produce a big melon anyway. I grew it this year and wished I had planted Harvest Moon instead because it produces a much larger melon, but even small melons are yummy in the summer. It just takes experience with melons to learn how they feel (weight in relation to diameter), how they look and how they sound when ripe. When we moved here and I had space to grow more watermelons, I worried and fretted about when they'd finally be ripe, especially that first year. By the second or third year, I had a much better understanding of it all. I'd grown melons before in my brother's sunny garden (mine was too shady and too small) in the D-FW metro area, so I already knew that watermelons never are ripe when I think they should be. Even now, when I look at a watermelon and think that it looks ripe, I wait another week to harvest it, typically with great results. One thing you could try next year is to plant one of the watermelon varieties that turn golden yellow when ripe. That way, you would get the feel for how the melon sounds (when you thump it) and how it feels (weight in relation to size) as it matures, which will help in the future with non-yellow types, but you'll have the peace of mind of knowing the rind will turn yellow as the melon approaches maturity. I don't grow many of the watermelon varieties that make large melons because they take up too much space in comparison to how few fruit they produce per plant. I usually plant the small icebox melons and grow them on a trellis. They produce tons of fruit per plant and we usually harvest more than we can eat. This year I grew muskmelons on that trellis instead. One thing that most folks learn the hard way when growing watermelons for the first time is that too much moisture ruins the texture and flavor (watering it down to the point that there is not flavor) and too much fertility (generally from synthetic fertilizers since organic ones usually have a relatively now N-P-K) gives the watermelons hollow heart. So, be aware of those issues and avoid feeding or watering the plants excessively once melons have formed. All carrots are more or less the same and what works for one variety will work for them all. The biggest issue is just getting the seed to germinate. It germinates better in hot weather than in cold, so I prefer fall carrots to spring carrots just because it is easier to get the seeds to sprout. Remember to thin them while they are small. They will not produce well if too crowded. Keep the soil moist but not sopping wet until the seeds sprout as tiny carrot seedlings can have a hard time breaking through a crusty soil. The seeds are real divas, but once they sprout and start growing, they're as easy as can be to grow, and will store well in the vegetable drawer of a refrigerator for a very long time. My garden is full of flowers, weeds, herbs and the few veggies still producing (tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, watermelons, muskmelons and volunteer pink eye purple hull pea plants), but it looks hot, dry and miserable, so all I'm doing is watering and harvesting. I only planted fall tomato plants for fall, intending to do more planting when rainfall returned. I'm still waiting for that rainffall to return and won't plant anything else if it doesn't. The ground is too hard to pull weeds unless I have just watered, and it is too snakey for me to weed the flowers, so the zinnia bed in particular is really grassy at this point. That won't change because I'd rather have grassy weeds than be bitten by the snakes I see most commonly in my garden at this time of the year---the timber rattler. Copperheads usually stay in one spot (in the shade of the honeysuckles that cover the entrance arbor) but the timber rattlers really like the zinnia bed. I am not sure why. I always do a pretty good job of keeping weeds under control until I see a venomous snake in the garden. After that, my enthusiasm for weeding wanes.