THANK YOU ALL, for looking and taking the time to comment.DEBRA, last year I tried over and over to get a decent picture of PALACE GARDEN BEAUTY, and never could get a decent looking picture, then some one told me to back up away from it so I tried to keep that in mind today,and it did turn out better. Jean

Once again, I never can be sure if I'm choosing a favorite daylily or the best photograph. The interplay of light and shadow on Hot Lava really appeals to me. I find I'm spending some time on the forum today because my boss at the garden center called and said 'we have no customers, don't come to work'. Sigh. I love my job. By the way (referencing another thread), we don't sell wisteria because it is so invasive and is included on a list of noxious plants to avoid which the state of Delaware distributes to all plant vendors . One man's weeds... Christine

I love the way INNER VISION and DESERT MOON look together. What a great combo! CHARISMA PLUS has that big eye/throat with the peachy/melon petals. Delicious! Is that one of Hibbard's lates? The CONTINENTAL HOLIDAY blooms are perfection - great color and form! FEAR NOT is always a crowd pleaser. Thanks for the beautiful blooms! Debra

Good Morning, Everyone! Nancy, Bruce alerted me earlier in the day to the fact that he had rain and it was moving my way, so I started watching, but I still wasn't really believing because it always seems to veer east of us. This time it didn't veer east until it had gone south of us, so we got almost an inch of desperately needed rain. I was so thrilled. So, the garden will be happy for a few days, but I suspect the moisture won't last long in the high temperatures. This really was our first good rainfall since around May 3rd or 4th, and for once, we got more rain than our Mesonet station instead of getting a lot less than was recorded there. Lillie helped snap beans and string beans for a couple of hours. She's a hard worker and loves gardening (she has a great-grandfather with a huge garden and always has helped with the garden since she was very small). We had 4 varieties of beans all harvested together, and she was fascinated with the purple ones and loved the Provider beans, which are more flat like Romas than round, because the Providers have very obvious strings and she loves pulling the strings. She'd pick those out of the pile to string and then snap. Catmint makes me think of Yellow Cat, who we lost a few months ago at a very old age, because he was the only cat we've ever had who liked catmint more than catnip. I can hardly bear to look at the catmint right now because it makes me miss him so, but we'll always have it in the garden because some of the little beneficial insects love it. Paula, I'm sorry to hear about the seizure. I'm so glad you're okay. Did they figure out what caused it? That must have been frightening. Take that Short Term Disability and live it up in the garden! God has a plan, and maybe his plan is for you to have a few months of gardening and grandkids without any other distractions. As far as gardening in one's PJs, my experience with that is that if I venture into my garden for just a minute in my PJs, I end up staying out there in them and that will be the day the mailman brings me a package that won't fit in the mailbox and there I stand at the garden gate accepting that package while wishing a hole in the earth would open up and swallow me right up. I'm always thinking "maybe he won't think these are pajamas" but who am I kidding? Melissa, I'd been wondering where you were. You poor mama! She'll come back, you know, even if only to visit and she's very young still so they might move back here at some point. Or, their relationship might not last anyhow. Often, what you think you want at 18 is not what you discover you really want later on as you continue to mature. Chris was the same age the first time he left home (for Georgia) and he was back home in a few months. Congrats on getting through to your son about the importance of living at home for at least the first year since he lives so close to school and congrats on his scholarship. I think college is such a huge adjustment anyway, and I think he has no idea how lucky he is to be able to live at home. I am glad that you and Sassy Pants will at least have the butterfly garden. You didn't mention how your mother-in-law is doing. I hope she is okay and is in remission. Mostly we're just excited to have 3 weekend days together because Tim's workdays are so long during the week. We're going out to the dinner tonight with our son and his girlfriend at their favorite restaurant in Ardmore. That's about it for our big weekend plans. Other than that, I suppose our big plans are grocery shopping and mowing a couple of acres. It doesn't sound very exciting, but I like having all the supplies bought and put up so we don't have to make little trips to the store during the week and there's nothing like mowing the grass to help make it easier to avoid stepping on snakes at this time of the year. Rebecca, I hope the next round of rain doesn't miss you. I know exactly how it feels to watch the rain fall everywhere else except at your own place, and it isn't encouraging at all. Jennifer, Your hen sounds okay then. Her broodiness should pass and she'd get back to normal soon I imagine. I probably won't be working in the garden this weekend, y'all, because I feel like I worked so hard all week getting that pallet of mulch into the garden that I deserve a break today....and tomorrow...and maybe the next day. I weeded and mulched until I couldn't see straight any more, and the last thing I want to do for the next three days is any weeding and/or mulching. Well, I'll have to harvest so that requires going into the garden, but except for that, I'll get a break. Actually, going into the garden is dangerous because if I see new weeds sprouting, which is so common in May after rainfall, that then I feel compelled to weed. It is sort of sad to see all the cool-season stuff coming out of the garden, but it is late May, so it is time. I've already got most of the hot season crops planted, so the succession crops to fill in empty spots left by the harvest of the remaining cool-season plants (onions and potatoes) will be mostly melons of all kinds (muskmelons, watermelons, Crane melons.....) and probably some zinnias. I am working so hard, lol, to have an easier summer that I'm being very careful to not plant too many succession crops of edibles. This is hard for me to do because I have to fight my usual pattern of just planting more edibles. I'll probably plant more zinnias over time, and maybe some cosmos. You never can have too many zinnias for the butterflies in the hot summer months. The heat and general lack of adequate rainfall are encouraging me to stay on my quest for an easier summer with less time spent processing and putting up the harvest. I still have 5 large containers to fill, or maybe six, and will be plant shopping for plants for those containers either today or tomorrow. I do not understand how this tomato problem keeps happening. We have so many tomatoes piling up on the kitchen counter that we either need to eat a ton of tomatoes for three meals a day all weekend long, or I need to make some salsa or sauce or something to use them up. I cut back so much on how many tomato plants I planted that I didn't think we'd hit the 'too many tomatoes' point until at least June. I think the heat is speeding up the ripening of the tomatoes too much. I'm not complaining about having tomatoes, but just about how they all seem to ripen together at one time instead of spreading themselves out better over a longer period of time. I need to have a talk with them about that. Last night, I awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of a bunch of coyotes that sounded like they were sitting right outside our bedroom window. It was at least one adult with a bunch of babies yipping and yapping, and it was close enough to be scary. I was glad all our animals sleep indoors at night. It is more typical to hear the coyotes howling further off, though not always very far away. I don't like it when I know they're in the yard. The cottontail bunnies are very plentiful at this time of the year, so I expect Mama was teaching the babies how to hunt for their meal. Something has been roaming through the woods all day and our dogs are barking at it nonstop. I never see anything when I look for whatever they're barking at, but Princess and Ace just have a conniption fit constantly. Now I'm wondering if that mama coyote is raising her young ones in there and if our dogs are hitting on their scent. I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend, whether inside of or outside of the garden. Dawn