We do have similar taste in plants!! My Ninebark Diablo also had a rough beginning. It was planted in a very sandy area ... mostly sand and I threw as much manure etc in there as I could. It sort of just sat there the first year, and I kept ammending the soil. It is 3 years later and the soil is still very sandy, but it has filled out nicely and is starting to look much more impressive. I was inspired to buy it after I saw one on a local garden tour. The one I saw must have been at least 5 years old, quite mature, and SO impressive when in full bloom ... a real show-stopper!! I have Sambucus Black Lace, another dark foliage one, and I really love it. It is also in it's third summer and starting to fill out nicely. The dark elders are really striking! I have Weigela "My Monet" which has stayed really small for me. I know it is supposed to be compact, but I thought it would get a little bigger than it has. Still, I like the variegated foliage :) New to me this year are some more (and different) Coneflowers, some new Daylilies ... I'm trying to add more tall bearded iris and lilies to the garden this summer as well. I just got a new rose "Monsieur le Capitaine Louis Frere", a beautiful red hybrid perpetual which I'm very excited about although I doubt it will bloom this year. Also adding a couple low-growing sedums, "Angelina" and "Chocolate Drop". Looking for "Bertram Anderson" as well, if I can find it locally. I haven't been out to look at local nurseries much yet, not enough time, but hopefully soon so I can get them before everything gets bumped up to the larger pots (and larger prices)! We have a climbing honeysuckle which is gorgeous, but you have to keep a close eye as the wasps like making their nests in there, and then the leaves fill out and you can't see it unless you bang into it (ouch). We also have a Climbing Hydrangea, which is quite vigorous and needs a lot of pruning each Spring but is quite the show-stopper in full bloom as well! I love the couple varieties of coreopsis that I have. If I can get them to over-winter (ie they are hardy here, which many aren't), then they really are tough plants and dependable bloomers. So bright and cheerful. I've been wanting to try Silene, I have seeds for "Starburst" which I traded for on a whim but haven't planted yet. I don't know much about Silene, never grown it before. Does it spread or seed around? Low grower or a taller plant? Anyone have a picture of Silene as a plant?

Hmmmmm... Getting rid of: Liriope muscari; they were controllable early on, but geez, did they spread! Too many unmanagable clumps lining the bed in the front of the house (maybe 10). I removed 3 last year and replaced with salvias. Much better ;) Rose of Sharon (lilac/red throat); really don't like it, never did, but I can't throw anything out. Will relocate to work ;) Already purchased a Hibiscus coccinea to replace it; yippee! Wants?: I'm getting into red. I never liked red flowers, but since I'm getting more hummers each year (well, this will be my third year), I want to keep them happy. I've already moved alot of my plants around, last year, and moved other hummer favorites in. I'm already trying to figure out what else I need to move and what else I can fit in! I think my veggie garden may soon be a thing of the past; it's right next to my hummer area, so it's taking up some valuable real estate! I want my Monarda "Jacob Cline" to become invasive! I also wish I had some better areas for vines. I purchased a Coral Honeysuckle, but I don't know where I can possibly put it, that it'll thrive and climb.

Everything I know about what cannas want (this won't take long!): 1. shelter from the wind As Barb said, wind will catch those big leaves like sails & whip them to shreds. I have some against the house & some against the fence. 2. sun. within reason. A client gave me a start of some burgundy-leaved cannas, which I lovingly planted in full sun 3 summers ago. They fry & wilt & look depressed & I've never gotten a bloom. About a month ago, I moved them to a less brutally sunny spot, & so far, they look good. I think dark leaves on any plant absorb too much heat. The red ruffled basil wilted every single day last summer, so I've moved it under a redbud tree. 3. reasonable water: Cannas are tropicals (funny to think that, since they grow like weeds here), not xeriscape or desert plants, & they like water & humidity & all that jazz. I put one in a pot one summer & set it in my miniscule "bog garden" (rubbermaid tote stuffed into a whiskey barrel) in bright shade. It loved it. Note to all: remove the pot from the bog before winter. Dormant cannas will rot if left in water. I just know this. 4. a little elbow room: Divide them every now & then. I usually do it when they start pushing each other out of the ground. (see? told you it wouldn't take long!)

Rebecca, I am happy your drought is gone too, but sorry this dreary weather contributes to your aches and pains. I am hoping for warmer, drier weather for all of us, but not sure when we are going to get it. January always seems like the dreariest month to me. Stock will grow here, but it is pretty picky, and I have better results from it when I plant it in October or November which is the same time here in my area that you can plant pansies, flowering kale, flowering cabbage, dianthus, and snapdragons. Stock is not only a cool-season plant, but it is a bit pickier about the cool weather than some other cool-season plants seem to be. For example, dianthus goes in and out of bloom cycles here pretty much year-round, whether the temperatures are high are low. Stock doesn't do that. Stock blooms when the weather is cool, period. I believe it has to have temperatures in the 60s in order to set flowers and bloom. Once your temperatures are hotter, then it is pretty much done. If you can find some transplants in flower or ready to flower and plant them in early Spring, you can get a few weeks to a few months of bloom from it if the weather cooperates. I like stock but don't plant it often in Spring as we get too hot too early down here most years. It also tolerates cold less well than the other plants I mentioned above, so may need to be covered up in the winter and early spring on nights going very far below 32 degrees. It will tolerate some light frosts but not real heavy ones. Lupines? I haven't tried the ones that grow in northern parts of the country as I don't think they'd do well in our hot summers but I grow the kind of lupines that God gave us....Lupinus texensis, aka Texas bluebonnets. They either are perennial here or reseed in our clay, and some years we get big stands of them and other years we have smaller stands. Our clay really is too dense for them here at our house and I knew that when I planted them, but I figured that maybe if I was foolish enough to sow the seeds and plant them here, then maybe they would be foolish enough to grow and bloom at least a little bit....and they do. I also have grown the red-flowered variety of Lupinus texensis called Alamo Fire and it does pretty well here. In our area, all kinds of Texas bluebonnets do better from seed sown in the fall than in the spring. The bluebonnet seeds have a hard shell and sprout sporadically over a period of a couple of years. I do see fairly large (maybe one gallon, maybe two gallon) pots of Russell hybrid type lupines in stores each spring. They have them around the same time they have delphiniums in bloom in large pots, so maybe in April. To me, these are the kinds of things you buy, bring home and plant for instant impact, and you do so knowing they are likely to be relatively short-lived in our heat. If you don't expect them to thrive and flourish in our heat and can be content just to enjoy them while they last, I don't see anything wrong with buying them and planting them. I suppose they could be a big disappointment if a person bought them thinking they would bloom all summer. Yet, you never know---what if we had a cooler than average summer and they did bloom and survive? Cool summers aren't common here, but we had one in 2015. Nancy, I've grown Drummond's Phlox here and it did okay, but not well enough that I continued growing it. Drummond's Phlox is one of the smaller varieties and it needs well-drained sandy soil (which I really cannot give it). As for the taller garden type phlox, there's a handful of heirloom types that thrive here---we had someone in our neighborhood in Ft Worth whose home was just surrounded by the old magenta-flowering one grown back in the 1960s and prior. I don't know the name of it. There's a few of the taller garden phlox, like the variety "David", bred to be mildew-tolerant, but I haven't grown any of those. Jennifer, We have a fenced chicken run. We always have had one. I wouldn't have a chicken coop without one. I believe our run with the only coop now in use (we have four coops, and each has a fully enclosed chicken run) is 10' x 20' and it is fully covered in sturdy fencing, including a fence type roof. The chickens are fine when they are in it, but they hate being confined because they are used to free-ranging. I think that if they never were allowed to free-range, they wouldn't know what they were missing and they'd be content to be in the chicken run. We have lost more chickens to predators in the last 5 years than we did in the first 15 years, and I'm just done with that. If we buy more chickens, they are not going to be allowed to free range because it really is just setting them up to eventually become some predator's meal. Our predator problem probably is 20 times worse now than it was when we moved here. As land a few miles from us continues to develop, the wildlife gets pushed upriver to us. We have to change how we manage our chickens, or there's no point in having them any more. Tim is gone from home roughly 14 hours a day on work days, so he barely sees the chickens except on weekends and he is out of touch with our current reality with regards to the predator issues. I wish we were in a nice, quiet semi-rural neighborhood where chickens can free range and be relatively safe within their own yard, but we live in a wildlife jungle. It would help if I could convince him to fence our entire yard, but he hates fences with a passion. I don't know how to have chickens any more without an 8' tall fence around the whole yard. Dawn