We continue to be ver pleased with hown the new bed is working out. It's filling in a lot faster than we expected and makes a big improvenment to the front garden. I need to get a picture of it from across the street to get the big front bed in the picture too but here are a few views from this morning: This one showns the south end by the Chinese wisteria (which is doing its summer sparse bloom phase) so you can get a feel for how it is filling out since the similar June picture above: From the road, looking south: From the end of the wisteria path looking north - you can see how I didn't have room to make the bed wider because of the ditch...: One thing that is really bugging me is that the variegated weigela I had planted several years ago in the main bed seems to be refusing to grow! That is leaving a void where I wanted a show of green and white foliage (and pink flowers in early summer) so I think it will get yanked this fall and replaced next spring with another one that will hopefully grow a bit more vigorously! rhodium - definitely a gardener's landscape here! :-) It's actually not too unusual in the immediate neighbourhood as there are a lot of avid gardeners on this street and the one behind us. Gardening is the local competitive sport! :-)

Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, October 1948 Duke was discharged, he was a happy fellow. The Army issued him a voucher for rail-transport from New Jersey to his home-state, California, but he had his discharge money and decided we should get a used car and drive West. He became the proud owner of a 1930�s Cadillac Touring Car, impressive, with running-board and back seating area as big as some living-rooms. I didn�t know anything about cars or actually what he spent on it, it was all new. I knew that Uncle Fritz, back in Frankfurt, always had big, impressive automobiles, so I took this for routine. So off we went, cruising around in that monster car, made it to Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where the car gave up the ghost. The bitter lesson: used car dealers setting up business adjacent to an Army base full of eager, na�ve brand-new civilians are predators. We had checked into a small hotel, trying to think what to do next. The people in the hotel were so nice, they fell in love with Joann, gave her balloons, and that evening the owner gave us two movie tickets and baby-sat Joann, so we could have at least a little relief from our worries. Next day, Duke went to the garage, the mechanic said the Caddy was definitely a basket case, but he had an old, 1934 Chevy, slated for the wrecking-yard, but operable, that he�d give us, it needed a quart of oil every hundred miles, but otherwise was running good. Duke took the deal, and we were off, going West. It was possible to get used oil by the gallons for maybe a quarter, sometimes it was free, so every hundred miles we pulled over and Duke put some oil in "Old Betsy". Motels and fast food joints were not available then, we stayed in "cabins", usually less than a dollar a night, they were not particularly nice, but gave us a chance to sleep, clean up, wash the diapers. Picked up bread and lunch-meat or cheese in grocery stores. Joann ate whatever we had, she was nine months old and a good eater. The memorable part of the trip got us to St. Louis and onto Route 66. One night, in the Ozarks, we had a cabin with a wood-stove. The proprietors invited us to have dinner with them, they made sure the stove was well stocked , wanted us to stay a couple more days, because they were going squirrel hunting and we should experience how good the stew would be, but we were in somewhat of a hurry to go and face Duke�s parents, so we declined. I remember a motel in New Mexico which had a roadside attraction: cages full of rattlesnakes, I didn�t sleep very well that night. That old Chevy kept chugging along, in retrospect I believe it was the ideal car for the trip, I didn�t know enough about Duke�s regular driving habits, this vehicle couldn�t be pushed too hard, we had to stop every hundred miles, had a chance to walk around, do diaper changes, look at the ever-changing scenery, I realized that this was a BIG country. People were friendly, we always had our evening meal in a diner, each was different, menus were more regional. Route 66 was a major highway, but it meandered, most of the time one lane each way, through little towns and villages. Scenery got more spectacular, the Desert of New Mexico and Arizona and then the winding mountain road to Flagstaff, awesome! Entered California late at night, at Needles and, money running short, decided to go on to Calimesa, where Duke�s parents lived. We hit a desert sand-storm, high wind pushing at the car, sand getting between one�s teeth, into one�s eyes, I put a clean cloth over Joann�s face to protect her a little. Duke kept apologizing, telling me California wasn�t always like this. I cherish the memory of that road-trip, it was a vacation before "real" life started, almost like eating dessert first, and it can�t ever be repeated the way it was then. Arrived at Duke�s parent�s place after midnight - and another story began.

Good question. I would say to ask this question in the discussion side of the forum. Have a good trip!

Diann & Cricket, Thanks for your kind responses. I am trying to pump a little life into this forum but it is sometimes tough to tell. I write these articles and have posted a few of them with usually almost no response. I'm not sure if nobody is reading them or if most just wish I would shut-up. Most of these articles are somehow design related because I believe that is where we, as gardeners, can get the biggest bang for our buck. I believe in substituting common sense in place of dollars and cents anytime that I can. The problem is that this topic has usually been so poorly presented that more fear and confusion have been created than helpful knowledge generated. Far too many folks wind up avoiding design issues because it intimidates them. One of the great secrets to life is that the experts usually don't know anywhere as much as you think they know. Unfortunately, when it comes to garden design, many of those who don the appearance of expertise know even less about it than the people reading the magazine. Sorry... I'm not falling for the notion that some writer living in a high rise apartment in New York City is qualified to be telling us (who actually play in the Iowa dirt) how to do things. Picante sauce should not come from New York City and neither should garden advice! I just try to present a little different look at design based upon what I have found actually works. Many times, all that really needs to be done is show folks how they can apply common sense used in daily life to garden situations. I am a great believer in the power of the human spirit. Given a chance and combined with a bit of working knowledge, the potential is awesome. However, each of us are individuals and we don't all learn things the same way. I attempt to capture the essence of design principles and present this information a bit differently without all the highfalutin words. Hopefully, some of us in "that other group" can now understand it too. I may be just an old clod kicker but I have come to realize that the "experts" seem to have a hard time explaining highfalutin words without using a bunch of other highfalutin words. Perhaps they really don't understand things that well either. IronBelly P.S. If anybody actually reads this stuff and would like me to continue posting other articles; please let me know. I'm not looking for ego strokes -- just want to make sure I'm not wasting your time. Otherwise, I'll just crawl back in my hole.