I would nix the all-perennial look in Cincy - you will not have anything there for 5-6 mos out of the yr., and go for shrubs and evergreens - an 8 ft wide border could be very beautiful. Have you seen the following Blue Holly - red berries in winter and shiny leaves - try Blue Boy and Blue Girl for evergreen hollies The deciduous hollies for heavy crops of red berries Various azaleas and dwarf rhodos like Purple Gem can be tucked up next to larger shrubs for a little shelter or even large rocks- huge spring color in a wide array from white, pink, purple, red, yellow Pieris - You have Mountain Fire for red foliage, Valley Valentine for hot pink flowers in spring, etc Variegated Osmanthus and Hollies - there are a number of evergreen variegated shrubs - even the mounding or prostrate Euonymous Hypericum Albury Purple - burgundy leaves, yellow flowers, red berries - a cornucopia of color Buddleia - as someone mentioned - a butterfly magnet The red and yellow twig dogwoods - you would be amazed at how screaming colorful they are in winter 1 Witchhazel for bloom in January - I have Jelena that I put by the driveway and I have a big smile every yr in Jan as I pull in and look at those flowers lilacs and dwarf lilacs late spring- I am very partial to Donald Wyman which is the nicest lilac I have ever had the flower panicles are just enormous - like a bunch of grapes An arbor with hardy roses and clematis mixed on it There are large flowered clems that bloom spring and fall, and the viticellas like John Treasure or Betty Corning that bloom their hearts out all summer long. You can also pair in the Sweet Autumn Clematis with another clem to give a giant send off to summer. Dwarf Magnolias like Jane-magenta & Butterfly - lt yellow The dwarf chamaecyparis like nana and nana Aurea Weigelas Beauty Berry - Callicarpa If I had a border like that I would mix in Trumpet, Asiatic, Oriental and Species Lilies Rubra and Alba, and L. Black Beauty which for me is often almost 7 ft tall, and also Dahlias - which will bloom heavily till a hard frost and can some get to 5 ft tall- I have taken my dahlias in during Thanksgiving week before. Also lots of bulbs like crocus, leucojum, narcissus, tulips, alliums, fritillaria, liatris, and all the non-hardy summer blooming bulbs like Acidanthera which smells so heavenly. Other evergreen shrubs - Alberta Spruce, hemlock - just prune it, Pencil Holly, Pencil Juniper, Arborvitae - prune them There is a dwarf white birch that is only 10-12 ft Also crab apples, dwarf hawthorns, Pink Diamond hydrangea, Pee Gee Hydrangea in tree form. there are dwarf forsythias that stay about 4-5 ft tall Tall perennials - many have been mentioned but you should take into account that they will take the best part of the summer to achieve their height so you start with them poking out of the ground in May and take it from there. Just because I'm partial to Monarch butterflies I always plant several varieties of Asclepias which is the only plant they lay eggs on and the caterpillars eat. I also plant Lobelia Cardinalis - Cardinal Flower and Monarda Jacob Kline which draws maybe 2-3 pairs of hummingbirds to my garden every yr. The tallest perennials in my garden are all about 4-5 ft Aster Honeysong Pink - 5 ft high and wide, perennial sunflowers Heliopsis and Helianthus, ASter Jindai, Anemone Honorine Jobert, Boltonia There is so much you could do with that space I hope you post some pics A

A note about sugar ratio and percent: To say a 1:4 sugar:water mix is 20% sugar is incorrect; the sugar is in dry, granulated form and the water is (obviously) liquid. The sugar industry expresses sugar concentration as percent sugar by weight (mass for you scientists) also known as Brix; where one Brix is equivalent to 1 gram sugar dissolved in a 100 gram sugar solution. This is the number a sugar refractometer will give you. A cup of sugar weighs 200 grams. A cup of water weighs 237 grams. A 1:4 sugar mix is 200 grams sugar + 948 grams water = 1148 grams total. Percent sugar by weight or Brix is: 200g / 1148g x 100 = 17% (rounded to the nearest percent). You 1:4 purists are only offering half the sugar concentration found in natural nectar preferred by Hummers! So, get over it already... By the same method: A 1:3 sugar mix is 200g / 911g x 100 = 22% by weight A 1:2 sugar mix is 200g / 674g x 100 = 30% by weight A 1:1 sugar mix is 200g / 437g x 100 = 46% by weight Benjamin F Tucker was among the first to mass-feed hummers in the 1930s and '40s. He used laboratory glassware to make his feeders (no Perky-Pet or Droll Yankees back then). His work was described in the December 1946 Popular Mechanics article: "Hummingbird Cafeteria". The lead photo shows 22 of his 'beaker feeders' lined up on wood shelves. A quote from page 125: "If you supply artificial nectar - half water and half sugar - he'll stay long after blooming time." Sounds like a 1:1 sugar mix to me - 46 Brix - and I don't believe he poisoned a single hummer... (PM December 1946 may be found on-line - I'll let you figure that out for yourself...) - waw -

Steaming means that when you hit their burning skin/hair with water to put out the fire, the water turns to steam and burns them more. It is the reason you won't see a firefighter spraying water on a burning animal to put out the fire, and it is tough to see. That's why I turn away--I cannot bear to watch it. The first time I saw animals on fire (armadilloes and possums), I begged the firefighters to spray water on them to put them out, and they said "Can't do it. It will kill them." I think they probably died anyway though. There is nothing near me. Are you kidding? Even a trip into Marietta takes 30 minutes round trip and that's just if you're popping into a gas station convenience store for a cold drink. Other than whatever is in Marietta (which in terms of shopping is not much), we have to drive 30 miles north or south to reach any decent shopping destination,and by decent I mean something like Wal-Mart. That sounds like a long way, but when we first moved here we had to drive 50-60 miles to get to a Lowe's or Home Depot. We also had NO cell service within 2 or 3 miles of our house, and no internet service. We had to buy a DirectPC satellite dish to have the internet. Our then-15-year-old son thought we had moved to a foreign planet. Eventually cell phone service moved closer to us. At one point we had cell service if standing down in the road 300' from the house, then eventually we had cell service in the living room of the house but no farther, and then finally anywhere in the house, but not north or west of the house. Now we have cell service everywhere on our property. See how we're moving on up to the big time? Eventually we had dial-up internet but it was painfully slow after having had DirctPC. However, it only cost maybe 1/3rd as much. Now we have (hallelujah!) wireless internet. You still lose all cell service when you get pretty far out west in our county, although a new cell tower was supposed to solve that. I haven't been out west since it went up, but someone who has been out that way said it was not the solution they said it would be. Once you get far west in our county, even the fire/police radio reception can be spotty, and I don't like that. Don't get me wrong. When we moved here we knew it was very rural and very remote, but the lack of cell service and internet service was a little surprising. Because we're in a lowlying area, Channel 12 was the only tv channel, period, that we could pick up and that was spotty and with a big antenna. So, we got DirecTV and still have it. Sometimes you have to give up some modern conveniences in order to live way out in the sticks. I am grateful every day for internet shopping and UPS. It is so much easier to order stuff and have it delivered than to drive 90 or 100 miles one way looking for it. The nearest Baskin-Robbins I can think of, by the way, is in Denton, TX, and I am not even sure if it is still there. There's a Braum's in both Ardmore and Gainesville but both are sort of off the beaten path and we rarely go there. During the dry months we leave Love County as little as possible because there's nothing worse than being 30 miles from home when the fire pager goes off. It makes Tim crazy and it is hard to get him to patiently wait while I finish the grocery shopping, for example, before we head back home. The fire either will still be burning when he gets there, or it won't, is my attitude. A couple of years ago we were in Lewisville shopping for a new treadmill and started getting phone calls and text messages urging us to hurry home because there was a big wildfire. We did. By the time we reached Denton, TX, we could see the smoke plume from the fire in western Love County, but we kept thinking it must be from a closer fire in Cooke or Montague County. We probably were already between Sanger and Gainesville before we realized that the smoke plume we'd been seeing since we were east of Denton was from our fire. That was a fire that took several days and all the departments in our county to extinguish it fully. In the summer or winter fire season, any time we leave home, we have a 'to do' list and hurry, hurry, hurry to do it and get back home. To me, it is a thrill to get to spend 4 hours in Denton without rushing back, but that only happens a couple of times a year. We'll eat lunch at a real restaurant, walk around the mall, maybe browse the bookstore. It is like a vacation, albeit a brief one. I am not complaining, either. One day of dealing with traffic and crowds in the D-FW metroplex and I'm ready to stay home for the next month. I love living in the country for many reasons, but shopping convenience is not one of them. Dawn

here anyway the orioles and tanagers eat the fruit best oranges and watermelon and apples. But the woodpeckers and grosbeaks do eat some. I use the regular grape jelly from the grocery store both the store brands and welch's jelly. I had several jars of homemade apricot jam in the pantry from last year and tried it and the birds enjoyed it. My orioles and tanagers have already left for the year headed south but the grosbeaks are still here and eat raisens and jelly the hummingbirds here leave out in september when it started frosting at night. I take down my necter feeders by the last of september. I was lucky this spring to have a pair of Lewis's woodpeckers fledge 4 young woodpeckers and they loved the jelly and watermelon and really devored the homemade woodpeker blocks made with sorgum and nuts and rasens and fruit bits. They have left recently but hope to see them in the spring. Our seasons here change earlier because of the higher elevations and mountains so we are probably way ahead of you in cool weather and frosts. which starts the summer birds on their way south.