Hi Carla! Gee it's nice to see you! I'm not sure if I told you we lost one of our two dogs to cancer just a week before we moved? The other one, Megan, is now finished with her 6 month wait (she's been staying with friends) and we are going back to pick her up this month. It has not been the same without having a dog in the house, I know that when she is here she is going to love the island, and being able to walk along the towpaths, and best of all, I can take her into the local pub where she will be treated as a queen. This is the last photo I took of her before we left, I can't wait for her to get here! Isn't she beautiful? Ann, thank you for all of those wonderful resources!!! I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Hi Joanne, it is great to hear from you. I have to say that I agree, the neighbourhood is amazing. I think Oxford is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I'm dying to start gardening, but now very much feel like the I am starting all over again, which is kind of exciting actually. :) Hi Carol, thanks for the welcome back! I haven't spoken to Jon or Joan, but maybe I will get lucky and they will speak up and give me some advice. I loved Mottisfont when I visited two summers ago, it was one of the highpoints of.. well sappy as it sounds.. my life. I had wanted to visit for years and it was every bit as beautiful and more than I ever dreamed. I'm hoping that if I can go this year I'll be able to really spend some time in the gardens, last time I was just too rushed to really appreciate all the wonder before me. Hi rozegardener, I don't know. I'm under the (quite possibly false) impression that England is equivalent to US Zone 8. I guess in my mind that I'm imagining it to be like Oregon or Washington. However, I'm already aware that people just a few hundred miles above me are having a much harsher winter, so that is part of my confusion. I'm just not sure how to "translate" Oxford into something that I can understand. Hopefully, I'll get some additional guidence from members, but at least the links from Ann are a great start! I think I can grow peony and lilacs here. Hurray!

Hi there all Virginians. I have been keeping busy in the garden this year. I have built 7 new beds in my back yard and am now working on 3 other. Most of them are shade or part shade. I only have one full sun garden and it is popping this year. It is super hot in that bed though. My mom calls it my cactus bed... I have no cacti in it so imagine that. My red yucca is blooming in that bed. It has a beautiful salmon colored stalk and flowers. If anyone has a super hot/super dry spot in their garden then i definately recommend that plant. It literally is in bloom from May to Nov here in Central VA, with a 5 foot stalk. I tried to grow Lupine in this garden but it was not having that. I did not double check the web, but something tells me that Lupine does not like temps over 100 like I had in this garden a few times this May already. I have moved that plant to my part shade garden and it perked up by the next morning. I planted a large star aloe and some hannibals dwarf crinum in a pot together and they do not seem to enjoy the exact same light conditions. Live and learn I guess. So I will be redoing that planting. Does anyone know how to keep big clumps of Achillea from getting that dent in the middle which looks like a cat sat in it. It has happened to all the large specimens that I have seen this year. My phlox in my "cactus garden" is now about 2 feet tall and I have already trimmed of the top 3 inches to make it poof. Does anyone grow Delphinum as a perenial here in VA. I have only tried once a few years ago but then I moved so I am not sure if they made it. I drove by but didn't see it. Anyway I can go on forever regarding my plants and other plants in general so I will stop now. I love the spring :) And here is a shout out to all the great people I have traded with since I joined here. Thanks!!! David

Here is a fairly local company that I like (they ship): https://www.modernmomsproducts.com/  I also bought my daughter a Southern California candle (where she was born) from Homesick candles. She liked it, me not so much. I like very few scents myself and basically stick to grapefruit, fresh apple (not apple pie etc), random herbals, and some autumn and Christmas blends. I also use a warmer and just sit any candle on it, use until the scent is gone, and then give the unburned candle away.

Sue, it took me a long time to figure out it was earwig damage. Only because the damage had become so extensive and a plant would look good one day and the next morning be a mess that I decided to see what was going on at night. And I wasn't seeing anything during the day that could be responsible for it. Sure enough, earwigs were all over everything. It took me a couple of weeks of nightly patrols with a cup of soapy water to get it under control. That was at least 5 years ago and I've not had that much of a problem again until this year. I have seen about 3 Japanese Beetles this year and that is typical for me. I do get the Asian Beetles, but in very manageable numbers. They make a mess of some leaves, but not a whole plant and they make a bee line to the rose blooms where you can easily remove them. If one thing doesn't get you, something else will. lol Oh well. That Hibiscus sawfly caterpillar. So sneaky, so tiny and almost the same color of the leaf. Next year, I'm going to be quicker to be on the look out for them. I'm just happy I discovered them before they destroyed my new Hibiscus. I've only had it two years. I have one other, a white with a pink eye, but it's not in a good location and gets neglected. That seemed to get a late start this year and is not ready to bloom. Don't you just love the saucer size blooms?! Sometimes a lot of the plants I like end up having the same size bloom and it gets boring. So nice to have a few plants with some drama. :-) I am going to buy more 'Black Beauty' this fall. 'Casablanca' has only one leaf with RLLB damage. No rabbit damage for some reason. And they bloom at the same time. And Casablanca is fragrant, I don't think BB is.