Well, for not maturing, it sure caught up - there are buds galore now! It must be strong enough to resist the ditchlilies that are mixed in with it, huh? It's just been orange, orange, orange for three years. Even orange this year, these just popped up intertwined! I'm not even sure how to separate them out in the fall. Thanks for your post!

Dear Sighing Carl, You actually sound quite normal and gardener-sane considering the present circumstance. Many of us here felt the same way last Oct. 30 when 14" of wet snow brought down everything it could and destroyed years of growth and thousands of dollars. Last year's event for me and your current status, as unpleasant as they were/are, brought me to a new level of gardening thinking. I try to make gardens look like more with less material not just because of $, but the aging bod can't do what it once did. Also, I've had to adjust my expectations of plant/tree/shrub heights. Last year's storm toppled 15' rhodies so that I had to lasso them and use the riding mower to bring them upright again, rebury the root system, only to eventually have to cut their height in half to prevent toppling again. The changing climate and its odd timing of storms forces me to rethink what I plant. Full Southwestern-like xeriscaping isn't quite my thing, but Mediterranean style with shorter growing plants works for me. Once one has lived through a night of 90' tall oak and maple trees cracking and their tonnage crashing to the ground making your house shake, well, shorter ornamental trees are now quite appealing to me. If you want them, Carl, I have a couple of lovely little Jap maples here with your name on them. Oh, and as for the sighing or 'deep breathing', I'm a 7th generation Connecticut Yankee who can make fire with two sticks, have had to pee in the woods and live for weeks without electricity; but these recent storms damn near made me pass out, so you can bet your asters I'm changing with the climate change. Start thinking about your spring swap wants. We will help you. Kindly, Jane

We are currently remodeling part of our home. As such, the entire contents of our kitchen, dining room and my home office are in cardboard boxes stacked halfway to the roof in one half of our garage. The other half of the garage, front to back, is stacked with our new kitchen cabinets ready to be installed on Monday. Last night the wind was strong and the rain came down fairly hard. Hard enough to cause our atrium to flood, which in turn seeped water into the back half of the garage. The rain must have been blowing toward our house as the front of our garage floor was wet as well. How that happens with a fairly new metal, roll-up door with weather stripping, we don't know. All we know is that a few soon to be installed drawers and upper cabinets got wet and swelled, as did the shelves of our very nice 12' bookcase and a few bottom cardboard boxes (which are supporting several others) got wet enough to start to buckle. As you can imagine, we had to do a lot of shifting and rearranging this morning and will have to see what the contractor says about the damaged cupboards on Monday morning. Other than that, I am really enjoying the rain! :-) Jodi-

Not quite as cold here, but the temps did drop 20 degrees overnight with blustery winds. Poor ds10 had a soccer game this morning, his last one of the season, and the temp was in the 20s with a wind chill factor in the teens. He is "guest playing" for another team who didn't have enough players for this tournament, and dh was the one who wanted him to play. So you bet I pulled the covers over my head this morning when the alarm went off and let dh take him to the game. He had to go out and buy ds some Under Armour cold gear tights to wear under his shorts. He needed them anyway...tomorrow night we are surprising our boys with tickets to their first NFL game - the Redskins vs 49ers. Just our luck that it's going to be bitter cold and the game doesn't start until 8:45 at night. We won the tix at our school auction a few weeks ago and it will be a dream come true for them. Living in the DC area, they are Redskins fans (poor kids!) but dh is from San Francisco, so they are also huge 49ers fans. And to top it off, the husband of dh's coworker is a retired DC cop who used to do security on the sidelines so he has offered to try and get the boys on the field, on the 49ers side. It's not guaranteed but he's been able to do it every time he's offered the opportunity to anyone else so they will be in heaven. Anyway, I will be happily ensconced on the couch at home with my daughters in front of a roaring fire, toasty warm, while they freeze their buns off. Hmm, kinda like right now...sitting in my warm house smelling the aroma of the pumpkin bread dd and I just made, while dh heads home from the game.