I think they have changed other things as well. When I went to bid on seeds last night it was different. I thought I was seeing things.I always search for what one seller has for sale. When that list used to come up it would have the highest bidder listed in the right hand column beside the highest bid. Now they just have the seller name beside the highest bid. You now have to click on that item to see who has the highest bid. It makes it a little harder for someone to go through and up all of your bids to the max when you outbid them on one item. They have to do a little more work if they want revenge. Has anyone else noticed this?

There is a book called the Sunset Western Garden Book that has a chapter on "what to plant beside swimming pools". It is a widely available book and also most every library in California has it. I'd check that list. Queen Palms are really messy with their fruit, which drops, rots, stinks, and draws clouds of flies. This is true for the cheap, common palms (Queen, Washingtonia) in So Cal. The seeds and fruits also draw rats, and rats love to live in the fronds. Acacias drop a lot of litter--flowers, pollen, leaves, twigs, likely to fly right in your pool. The standard thing to plant is Italian Cypress that you top when they get to the height you want. You get a dense screen that isn't wide. Topping trees is sort of barbaric, but when you have limited space and need privacy you do what you do, and letting them get too tall isn't a great idea. A good basic shrub like Ligustrum japonicum will get to 12' fairly quickly and can be sheared into a dense hedge. It's quite clean IF you keep it sheared regularly. Also tough as nails. Some of the selections of Pittosporum tenuifolium can make good screens with modest litter drop if you keep them sheared regularly. They do not like being away from the coast, so if you are farther than about 8 miles inland, maybe don't use those. Metrosideros 'Springfire', nice and dense. Italian Buckthorn. The gold standard for narrow screens for Southern California used to be Syzygium (Eugenia) paniculata. You can get something 12' tall and 18" wide. However the Eugenia psyllid kind of spoiled the party a decade or so ago. I'm having decent success with mine as a tiny predator of the psyllid has been released and established in the area. At 12 feet tall, a medium shrub is all you need. Avoid Ficus as it cracks retaining walls, pool decks and pools. Podocarpus makes a gorgeous screen, but eventually the roots will also destroy concrete structures. It just takes longer than Ficus.

I am so sorry. Your girl sounds like she was a terrific dog. The saddest thing about dogs is that their lives are so much shorter than ours. I have used roses as a memorial for some much-loved pets, too. There are so many kinds of roses and they are so variable. What will do well for me in zone 7a Tennessee may not survive for you in zone 5 NE Ohio. I grew up in NE Ohio and well remember the long, bitter cold winters. Please keep in mind that while I may suggest some of these roses, I may not have grown them myself and did not grow them in Ohio. They are rated to survive a z5 winter but your microclimate may be colder or warmer than that and your special situation may not be suited to that rose for other reasons. For best results, check with someone local who may have grown it. Sweet Fragrance- a Ping Lim rose- While not all are exactly the same, Ping Lim roses were bred to be disease free and hardy, so things like fragrance took a back seat. Sweet Fragrance is a little different. It is a lovely coral/peach/ apricot color. It isn't my most fragrant rose but does have a nice fragrance. It is disease resistant for me but hasn't been a fast grower. The following three are Kordes (a German rose nursery) roses. Kordes and other European rose breeders are having to find roses with innate resistance to disease because spraying has been banned there. Many of these roses lack fragrance but there are exceptions. I don't grow any of these, although I grow several older Kordes roses that are tough as nails For pictures and a better knowledge of these roses, you might follow the ongoing discussion about rating the new Kordes roses. Folklore- I can't say much more than it's a two-tone rose with an unusual color combination, sort of a rose-coral and yellow. People who grow it have remarked on its fragrance. Summer Sun- Ditto the above, except more orange/reddish and yellow. South Africa- This is a rose that I've considered but it was never available by the time I ordered. It's sort of an apricot/golden color and so lovely. It does remind me of autumn. Fragrance is the icing on the cake. The last are Griffith Buck roses. Buck bred roses in the 80's that were able to stand up to an Iowa winter and still come back and bloom. They weren't tested nationwide for disease resistance. Disease resistance might be different in Ohio than in Iowa or here in TN. However, many have survived to come back and bloom beautifully. I have grown some but not all of these: Enchanted Autumn- I thought of this when you said that you wanted autumn colors. It is a blend of fall colors and also has a nice fragrance. Golden Unicorn- I loved this rose. Since it never had winter die-back for me it got a lot bigger than the official size of about 3'. Seemed to be especially tough and hardy. The roses would go past quickly but it bloomed a lot and put on its biggest and best show in the fall. Golden yellow with a touch of apricot, it becomes more and more apricot in cooler weather. Nice fragrance. Sadly, it succumbed to the rose rosette virus which can attack any rose. Honeysweet- This one is on my someday list. It's a lovely blend of rose, pink, coral and yellow that is difficult to photograph. It can black-spot some here but may not for you. It has a lovely fragrance. Prairie Sunrise- One of my very favorite roses of any kind. It is a blend of sunrise colors, as you might imagine- apricot, peach pink, yellow and orange. The flowers are full, cup-shaped and oh-so-fragrant. The plant is smallish here but tough and forgiving. It is capable of blooming and growing in spite of imperfect conditions. Winter Sunset- Another name for this rose is 'Fuzzy Navel'. It is a pretty golden apricot yellow with a nice fragrance. Also on my someday list. I don't spray my roses and don't know how they'd grow if I did. I can live with imperfect leaves now and then but not with sickly or difficult roses. Your standards might be different than mine.

"Sadly, our current home meets 90% of the requirements in your suggestions: one story, easy access, plenty lighting both indoor and outdoor, wide hallway & door way, wide space in the kitchen, all 3 bathrooms designed for aging...etc. We love our neighborhood. It seems we do not have sufficient reasons to move if it is not because the house and yard are too large for us." Do you want to move, or do you think you should move just because you're aging. If you love the neighborhood, love the house and it's designed for aging, there's really not a big argument in favor of moving. As someone above suggested, can always hire out the lawn work, and if you think the house is too big for you, just close off some rooms, leave them empty or use them for storage, that way you won't have to clean them, and you can shut off the vents to conserve air conditioning costs (heck, a lot of people do just that with a basement...). Not a big deal in my book. Filling in a pool would probably cost less money than paying a commission on the sale of your house combined with closing costs on a new house and the other associated costs with a new house (paint/decorating, minor repairs, etc). DH and I did think about the ability to age in place when we purchased our current house, although not to the extent of the some of the suggestions above (which are great and definitely things to think about down the road - our house is adaptable to a lot of the above). I had a tri-level for a long time, and we were adamant about a ranch. Period. I didn't care about a basement, but DH wanted a basement - man-cave and all that. We did think about ability to access necessities (grocer, drugstore, etc) when we're older and driving becomes more difficult. But, I wonder if that even matters -- in the next 10-15 years or so (if that) self-driving cars will be the norm, so if you're not at the point now where you can't see yourself driving in the next 10 or so years I wouldn't worry about transportation as a criteria for housing for seniors.