Most all the minor spring bulbs will grow under deciduous trees and they will be much easier to plant if there are a lot of roots under the Maple tree. These bulbs get enough sunlight before the trees leaf out to be happy. Using minor bulbs will also increase the length of your bulb season as many of them bloom before a lot of daffodils and tulips. I have Scilla Siberica, Anemone Blanda, Chionodoxa, Fritillaria meleagris, & Ipheions (along with a nice collection of various miniature daffodils (regular daffs already suggested by Daisy will work too) growing under the very dense shade of a low-growing Crabapple tree. BTW, my tree is right up next to the patio, so seeing little bulbs is no problem. If yours are to be seen from a distance, I would use the minor bulbs as low sheets of color under the tree & probably use the large daffs, if I wanted daffs as well. One thing to remember is that it takes a lot of minor bulbs for impact from a distance. Think in hundreds not tens, but they are very inexpensive & you can add a few of the 100-packs (don't worry - these are very easy & quick to plant) each year of this or that to get the effect you want. Most of them spread well also, some even too fast, especially if you have sandy soil. Please see my pictures of some of these minor bulbs in the posting by Trowelgal on this page about planting with sedums. All of these minor bulbs should be available from places like Brent & Becky's Bulbs & John Scheepers. I attached a link to Scheepers, which has some lovely pictures of various varieties. Fritillaria meleagris - this one likes a bit of damp, which might be a problem under a Maple tree, but really lovely and spreads very well for me. Might be worth a try. The white ones pop out the more purplish color of the others & I love the checkering. P. S. These are also taller than the mini daffs. Miniature daffodils - I bought two mixed packages of 50 minis each which have spread generously. I now have two large patches, each with various small daffodils blooming at different times of the season, which is nice. Here is a link that might be useful: John Scheepers

ilene-84, Happy Birthday to your Dad! Is he a WW II vet? I hope all the medical issues are behind you and your family now. Spring is around the corner and it's such a great time of year. And, I'm sure when your kitchen is all done, it will be great simply because it has been a labor of love. It's good to know I am not the only one sleeping terribly. I wake up every day with a terrible headache and neck pain. I also wake up in the middle of the night repeatedly adding up cabinet sizes, trying to make a list of events of what should come next, what goes and doesn't go, if I do this then I have to do that and the infamous DID I MAKE A MISTAKE and what are my options now if I decide to change the layout. I started keeping a pen and paper on the night table to be able to jot down the ideas and make notes. However, one kitty is a pen thief, the other is a paper tearer. So when I get up to find the pen, big doggie has to come over and inquire as to what I am doing but more so to make sure he is not missing out on a food tidbit. Then DH starts in, what's wrong, is everything okay . . . it's so pitiful I have to laugh because I would cry. Now I try to get back into bed and find out that another kitty has stolen my warm spot and I just can't bear to move them so to the couch for me where I wonder, I just left that bed with all of them so how did we fit on there before! At least I'm off the kitchen biz. So much for the couch idea. There is usually the shy rescue cat there who so prefers DH to me. Then if I manage to lay down, it's impossible to get my back comfortable but then I finally fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion and then there is DH waking me, come back to bed, you know the couch is no good for your back. Argh . . just leave me be! This is a daily routine for us. I almost want to quit my day job and get a night job just so I don't have to go to sleep. I am sure also that the massive amounts of junk food I am eating is not helping the situation either. I am actually craving veggies so I don't know what that says about the diet. But in the end I will have a nice enough kitchen that I have built out of a labor of love. I am so looking forward to cooking again for us so hang in there! Christine, thanks for sharing your perspective on things. I must say you must be one strong resilient woman! You go girl.

I don't know how people deal with five to six month winters. Having a garden room attached to the house would be a necessity for me, to keep from going nuts. I wish I knew where I saw the pictures of a working greenhouse in really frigid climates, growing veggies like zuccini in the winter, and tomatos as well, and only a step through a doorway to reach it. They built a good foundation, of course, and oriented it properly to keep it from baking in the warmer weather, brief though it might be. I'm still a big fan of heavy duty shade cloth, much more useful in south Alabama than it would be up north. I'm once again thinking about shading my poor blueberry plants from the searing heat of this drought. The picture you show of the sunroom and the wrought iron lace chair and table remind me of old southern style. I found such a table and chairs at a salvage yard, and for now it is up in Massachusetts waiting to move south later this year. Let me see if I can find a picture of it for you. Your picture of the Sarah Richardson style kitchen is always an inspiration. For my kitchen, I've copied the way she has cabs built above the French door fridge, but not full height cabs on either side. Just low ones. I want windows on either side if at all possible. But we'll see how much storage space we have. About looking skinny, my MoccasinLanding kitchen was 11 x 17. I kept it from looking skinny by eliminating wall cabs on the long dimension, and having wall cabs on the narrow ends. I had a rolling small m/wave cart as an island with a pot rack overit, on a pulley to raise out of the way as needed, and I put a short bar in an L-shape near the cook top, enough room for 2 stools, the bar was regular counter height not the 42" height, and had no backsplash at all. I also installed on the long walls open shelving which let me store things there, but did not close in the walls as solid wall cabs would do. Those photos from 2003-4 are on another computer I believe, unless I run across the CD I transferred them to. That was the biggest kitchen I ever had, and it had its problems but I liked it.

I don't grow peppers and tomatoes in the ground here due to root knot nematodes. I did stick one cayenne in the ground just because I had no more pots to put it in. I'm not sure what the problem is with the others, which were grown in containers with commercial potting soil. They started out well, then stopped when it got so hot (mid-to upper 90s every day). Heat has never affected my chili peppers before. I put the bell peppers into a spot where they got afternoon shade, but they still struggled. The leaves were all crinkly, so I added eggshells for calcium. Maybe lime would have been better, but they like acid soil, so maybe not. I admit I'm not used to growing these things in containers. I've always grown them in the ground, but the soil here is terrible and until I can build it properly, I can't really plant much in it.