Hi Lindie, I'm Tiffany. I visit gardenweb most days, but not always this particular forum. Just depends on my mood and time available. I'm in AL, just north of FL, moved here in 07 from OH and absolutely love it. Nobody is in a hurry, and there's something blooming all year. We often spend Saturdays or Sundays at the beach, or swimming in a nearby cold spring or spring-fed lake. We like camping, inviting tons of people over for a BBQ, exploring dirt roads to see what we can see, fishing, drive-in movies, canoeing, sitting around the fire - ours or somebody else's, kites... I've been to most states east of the Mississippi, Canada, Europe, but am also a homebody most of the time. I also like gardening (obviously,) cooking, cross-stitch and the gridded/geometric art associated with it, occasionally rearranging my seashell collection, reading about any type of fiction and non-fiction from areas of interest, driving my car on a beautiful day when time doesn't matter, watching the sun set, scrabble, and dancing if nobody is looking. I used to like skiing but there is no snow here, and hiking but am too afraid of encountering a poisonous snake to do that here. My daughter went to college this year, about an hour away, and I miss her but am glad she's doing well and having fun. I've met a very nice man here and am totally in love with him and his dog, and they moved in with my son and I earlier this year. He's smart, funny, fixes things, and does cool stuff like making a fire pit, bat house, tilling up a veggie patch, and mowing with the bag so the grass and leaves can go in the compost and on the beds. The fenced-in yard, central air, much bigger kitchen, and much more light from windows are why we decided on my house instead of his. There are a ton of lizards, skinks, squirrels, birds, and geckos that live here, an occasional armadillo, and various neighborhood cats and dogs that come to the yard to visit our dog. We've had a few hummingbirds and a ton of butterflies this year, they are always visiting the zinnias, lantana, basil, and plumbago. About a year before I met him, my oven quit working right - it would come on but not turn off when it reached the desired temp, it just kept getting hotter and hotter. Since I hardly ever used it, and 3 of the stove burners still worked, I didn't try to have it fixed or replaced. I was already much more of a toaster oven user, especially in the summer, when the thought of turning on anything that would create so much more heat is just unbearable! When he moved in here, his oven was one of the benefits (major or minor, depending on time of day and what I cooked for dinner - LOL!) It's just a basic one with coiled electric burners and it has a self-cleaning feature but hopefully that would never be needed. There's no dishwasher here, besides me, so it's rare that I would cook any meal without foil. And I've always lined my ovens with foil, and always put a sheet of it or a baking...

I just wanted to post that I was out at the National Arboretum a few weeks ago. The large Q. acutas looked like they sustained some damage from teh past winter. Some twig and a few branches died back. Sad to see. But they will certainly survive. The Q. salicina looked like it had NO damage at all surprisingly. I have never seen acorns on them. Interestingly the Q. phillyreoides had some acorns. No apparent dieback. They all looked rather shrubby to me and not large single trunked trees. L. henyri and Q. myrsinifolias looked just fine. Q. glauca specimens at the Arboretum have all had a rough go of it over the years. Numerous diebacks. Pretty pathetic. They should really not be grown up here. But maybe they got some northern provenance stock that they wanted to try. I didn't see where they were from. Unrelated, but all the hollies looked great. Even Ilex latifolia. The Ilex latifolia in my yard looks great as well. No apparent winter damage. A small amount of leaf spot but overall I was very pleased. This post was edited by dave_in_nova on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 10:33

Not yet, but I did just join today after lurking for a while! I'm hoping zipdee will tell me where in NC she lives? (Sorry if that's a bad thing to ask; I've tried to learn all the rules before posting.) I want to hire her to be my interior designer! Anyone else in the Triangle area in NC? lisa_a, we spent last Christmas in Sherwood OR. (LONG but great story, if there's a place to tell it elsewhere on here.) In a nutshell, our baby had been born in Hillsboro the day before we left (Dec. 21... Happy Birthday, Baby!), so we went to get her and stayed in a house on the highest point in Sherwood. Took us 36 hours to get to the hospital because of the awful weather. Wonderful experience though! I'd love to go back in the summer. Thanks for being so willing to share all your kitchen experiences! We are getting ready to pull the trigger on a reno right after Christmas. I'm nervous!

Here 'Bloodgood' Japanese Maple is often called red maple. "OK, so Rose of Sharon may sometimes be used for Hibiscus syriacus (until recently a fairly rare sight in UK gardens.)" So, what is the common name for ROS in the U.K.? I purchased a double-flowered one on clearance yesterday and the tag said "althea". I have never heard anyone call rose of sharon "althea" before, nor have I heard it referred to as such online. I also hear people refer to rhododendrons as laurels, or laurels as rhododendrons. I'm neither one of those. I refer to azaleas and rhododendrons alike as "rhododendron". Mountain laurel is of no relevance to rhododendrons. I have never heard kalmia latifolia called "red stemmed ivy" either. Of course, it doesn't grow readily where I live, but if you drive 2 hours up to the blue ridge parkway they're everywhere.