Bumping this on down. It was a great show in spite of the freezing temps the past week. I now have a list of new ones I 'need'. Sue

Thanks for the nice comments everyone. The sitting garden started out with me just wanting a little bridge over the drain area that runs out from our garage. I was afraid someone was going to run around the house and twist their ankle in the dip that was forming. So my husband and I built the bridge, he dug out the drainage area a little more and filled it in with rocks. Then one thing led to another and this is what we ended up with. I would rather have put in some other type of material for the walkway, but these square pavers was simpler. My husband does a lot of the work, so I didn't want to ask him to do a walkway with a bunch of bricks, although I think that would have been more subtle and natural. Someday, it will be filled in and the plants will soften up the blocks to where they don't have such a cold look to them. Vickie

Those are beautiful. It appears lilies can withstand the heat better than we can. Normally I don't like orange lilies (because of the ubiquitous ditch lilies all over the place here), but I'll make an exception for that one! Love the purple and just drove by a lady's house w/front yard chocked full of perennials, spotted what I thought was an unusual daylily but didn't want to get out of the car there, looked kind of like your pinkish one. Are you the one I talked to last year about Brave Heart? I bought some on ebay but never got them planted, too tired by then. Whew, hit a key and almost lost this. I'm losing it lol. I'll look forward to more of your photos. I ordered just a few iris from Wild's and as an afterthought, asked about Brave Heart. She said it was on the list, took my order for 3 and said they'd call if it was not available. It's not in their catalog or online one this year. So I'll feel extremely fortunate if it comes, still don't know where to put them. Aren't they a little shorter than most? Your colors were so intense on that. There is another photo on the web, and it's raspberry but not as pretty as yours. Is yours in part shade or shaded by other plants? Soil and zone could make a dif, too, also the way cameras capture colors, time of day, and transmitted through umpteen servers before it shows up on my monitor, which could be off a bit, never calibrated it like you're supposed to. You did well with the photos standing in that heat. Maybe you have the ac on, and it's almost worse going out in the heat than not running it sometimes. Right now I'm using my commercial fans but will probably have to turn on the ac soon. It's really humid because of all the rain we've had which makes it feel hotter, but cooled down nicely now. Sometimes I envy people who live in the south that they can grow things we can't. But then I think of the summer heat there, and it gets just as bad here but not prolonged like for you.

HoosierBred, I will let you know we just went through this entire process about 2 months ago, but we are located in Central Ohio. We went through First Federal of Lakewood, but I think they only service Ohio. It looks like you are going with local banks which from what we have learned is the best route because they offer the most competative rates! Our bank is giving us 1 year to complete our build, we closed on the loan on the 23rd of December. We ended up with a rate of 3.39% and that is during the build and will be our final rate after the home is complete. We wanted to get out of PMI with 10% down so they broke our loan into 2- which is 80/10 thats saving us 300 dollars a month on PMI. With our bank we did have to have a purchase agreement signed and the builder was involved with the financing because they had to have the floor plans and costs and upgrades so they could do a paper appraisal (this was a one time close.) The appraiser actually went to our builders model to see the finishes and the quality of build and our appraisal came in 57k over what we are paying for the home including land. Now also what I have found out is many places charge a higher interest rate during the build sometimes 5-6% because you are paying interest only during the build, and then will lock you in at what ever the current rate is at the completion of the home. I do suggest taking a look at many places and finding out how their programs are structured and then once you find one that works best for you then doing the application! We did look into farm credit, but their rates were higher thank FFL, and they required 20-30% down with a back end DTI of 36% and with our current car leases we were 3% away from that mark. As well we had 20-30% down but we wanted to set asside a bubble for overages and we are also wanting to put an inground pool in and didn't want to finance that portion because a pool really doesn't add much value, other than pleasure. Hope this helps some (sorry I am not in Southern IN) -Clayton