Thank you all for your advice. What great folks! I will leave the top stuff alone to do its duty and will take all that rich looking stuff from the bottom. Actually, there's so much of it now that I'll be giving it away to my city friends who "rent" those community garden spaces to grow veggies. Now that I've wised up (thanks, everyone), I'll start adding other good stuff to the pile, like newspapers, cardboard, coffee grounds, etc. To think we've been taking those things to the recycling center all these years! Just giving it away, lol. One of my concerns was that there *might* be so much N in the compost that it would interfere with seed germination. But that's not the case and now I can go ahead and add the compost without any worries. I don't bag every time I mow; just this time of year when the grass and weeds are so thick that it would look like a hayfield if the cuttings are left on the lawn. Things just grow too fast and thick in the spring with all the rain. We don't use a lot of fertilizer, mostly because we are lazy AND forgetful. But we do use it on the heavy-feeders occasionally, while the plants that thrive on neglect almost never get any. Actually, I've found that keeping the roses in food prevents many of those fungal diseases, so they're the only ones that get any real attention in the form of fertilizer. This is better than resorting to sprays. But most plants simply don't need it; maybe once every year or two. Mostly I just put down some alfalfa meal in early spring and a little composted manure/humus. That keeps the plants happy. Oh yeah, potash. My soil is always testing very low on potash, so I add that once a year if it's needed. Thanks again, everyone!

With big new gardens, you'll be getting your baptism by fire so I definitely wouldn't make more work for myself by lifting the wood chip mulch. Also, since the perennials died back in the fall and returned in the spring, the previous gardener obviously put in plants that do well in your climate and garden's environment so hardiness doesn't seem to be an issue. For us in colder climates, snow cover is the best insolation - it protects from heaving, wind dessication, sun scald. You could definitely smother things by over protecting- compost, mulch, grass clippings, leaves plus wet burlap. Seems that'd be a sure recipe for rot. I've relied on winter snow cover since I don't mulch - nothing against mulch but just haven't wanted to go that route. I may change my mind if our rain deficient conditions go into a third year and beyond. Since I was in your situation inheriting large family gardens (all of which needed restoration, rejuvination and reorganization), mixed shrub borders, and big expanses of lawn in 2002, I can reiterate what's been said above and maybe offer a tip or two: You can't get it all done at once. I spent the first growing season keeping a garden calendar/diary noting when things emerged, bloom time, color, size of plant, did it need dividing, thinning, transplanting elsewhere, or discarding altogether. I used that first season to prune back overgrown shrubs, plant Viburnum in some gaps, dig out some ratty Barberry that wasn't worth keeping, discard old hybrid tea roses that managed to throw out 1 black spotted leaf apiece. And, although composting was always done on a small scale, I turned it into a much bigger operation. So make sure you start or continue a compost pile. Sometimes you just can't save everything. Weeding and clearing out grasses from around dense clumps of things was too hard. I let things bloom out and just lifted them all, cleaned them out, divided, and with whatever part of the bed was temporarily empty, I dug and screened out the grasses, weeds and lily sprouts, did some soil amending and reset the plant divisions. Anything I couldn't relocate, I potted up and put on the curb with a "Free" sign. Gone almost instantly and saved from being composted. There is an optimal time for dividing plants, but I have the tendency to do it any time regardless. No losses so far. A little breathing room to get in and among plants. At first I liked the smothering of space effect, but once getting into serious weeding, space between things got to make more sense - and I wasn't stepping on things in the process. Take advantage of naturally occuring plants. My first sign of spring is a sea of Scilla, and as those are fading and starting to disappear altogether the wild forget-me-nots start. The forget-me-nots are such dense mounds they choke out other weeds and are easy to pull out if inconvenient. When the ferns start to unfurl I get wild columbine and Johnny Jump-Ups. The joy of annuals. Although primarily a perennial gardener, annuals are supurb bloom gap fillers. Inexpensive, readily available, some folks even have great luck starting them from seed (I don't) and non stop until the first killing frost. Gardening should be enjoyable and a rewarding pasttime. If something doesn't appeal to you or doesn't perform like you expect, replace it. I've added plants my Father wouldn't have considered on a bet - different sedums, daylilies other than the old Hyperion and Tetrina's Daughter, Oriental poppies, Black Eyed Susans, bleeding hearts, hostas, salvias... Much more than you wanted to read, no doubt. But I know what it's like to be faced with sorting out a garden you didn't initially plant. If you run into things you can't identify and have a digital camera, posters on the "Name that Plant" Forum are incredibly quick with identifications.

Hi Deborah, They do bloom in winter but it can vary depending on the plant genetics and local conditions. When you have harsh winters they may be later but often you will have plants in bloom around this time of year. The thing is they start upward movement early consistently but can develop very slowly over many weeks particularly when weather is very cold, so that they are often not in full bloom until maybe February-early March in my garden. But the first blooms on some plants will open weeks or months earlier. My plants begin to bloom anywhere from December to March generally, some are consistently early and others consistently late. Most garden hybrids are fairly early and some species can be very early or quite late relative to the mean. Here is a photo from February this year in my garden as proof. :-) You can grow them in containers but it is not as straightforward for the long term. If you are experienced with container culture there should be no problem. It might be safer to give them a sheltered position if left outside in above-ground pots through winter. I have some plants survive in containers for years in total neglect. Others have not, but it was probably a matter of neglect rather than temperature that did them in (for example no water in summer etc.). So while you can expect these to be among the very earliest of your blooming plants, you don't necessarily have to believe that a particular plant will "always" be in bloom at Christmas. Obviously it will not be in a garden with a foot of permafrost at that time of year. But they do bloom at times that you don't expect from plants which is one of their main attractions. Joseph Here is a link that might be useful:

Good advice from CATHY. I, too, use dishes, and either use the wet saw or hammer. I also mix w/stained glass. Hobby Lobby has stained glass, and I buy it ONLY when it's 20/30% off, to mix w/the dishes. Pretty colors aren't easily available in my town, so I buy color wherever I can find it. I was a quilter for many years, but when I got hooked on mosaics, I left the quilting. I have an idea you won't have to worry about TWO expensive hobbies, cuz once you're into mosaics, you'll leave all other hobbies behind. Check tile stores for scraps of their broken tiles, glass stores for mirror. I get tons of mirror for free. Check surplus stores. I just made a haul on designer glass tiles at a surplus store. Also check Habitat for Humanity. I seldom buy bags of tiles from the mosaic supply sites, but when I did, I used Maryland Mosaics and Mosaics by Maria. Mention the Garden Web when ordering from Maryland for a 10% discount. Learn to cut glass and save a bundle.