Great pics, and I love to watch the little critters that visit the gardens! I spend hours contorting myself into strange positions to get pictures of the pollinators and other visitors. At first, the bees or butterflies seem skittish when I first appear, but after a few minutes, they seem to get used to this big human creature with a camera. They let me get very close sometimes. Here are a couple of the assorted bees that come to pollinate - Yesterday was very exciting, a female Monarch was alternating between nectaring and laying eggs on the Asclepias tuberosa and incarnata. Here she is nectaring - And here she is laying an egg - Can you spot the butterfly in this picture? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oh, here she is!

with the guarantee .. what do you have to lose ... BUT DONT PLANT IT WHILE THE NEW GROWTH IS TENDER ..... IMHO ... leave it in the pot .. keep it properly watered ... let it dry between waterings ... and plant it when the new growth starts to harder ... it is currently in a super growth phase, and perhaps not the best time to mess with the roots .... let it slow down .. and you should be all set ... i have been know to secure a bargain ... plant the pot and all below the soil line.. we dont want a black edge to catch sunlight and mess with the root ball ... I WORK WITH SAND THOUGH .. AND HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE IMPACT WOULD BE IN A CAULDRON OF CLAY ..... perhaps another post on subject if you are considering such .... and then plant it properly in the fall .... this might be your best option in a location where the heat of summer is extra hard ... disturbing the roots a few weeks before the heat hits, might be a recipe for disaster.. subject to the warranty ... good luck ken

We have lots of new toads or frogs, I'll have to look up the images to see, and some baby ones as well. Our two dachshunds were each watching a toad (my guess) . The younger one was using a front foot to keep it from moving away while she observed it. I'm hoping if they get too close and try to do bodily harm to the toad, that it squirts them with some bitter stuff. Might make them foam at the mouth, but it is all for a good cause. They need to learn to leave them alone. I now believe the hissing pot from last year held a toad which got stuck with my plant name tag. I had another pot hiss at me this spring. And, in a newly planted hosta, next day there was a hole between two eyes, just right size for a toad to slip down to the bottom. I left it alone, but put new mix in the hole. I tell myself it is a hissing toad anyway. I'm thinking too that wild birds eat slugs. Yuck.

Well there is one thing I think is pretty unanimous - the doorway between the dining and living rooms will get moved over to the west about 20", allowing the space under the stairs to be better utilized either for storage or a little reading nook/desk spot. Got the toughest decision out of the way first :) I really don't want to mess with the plumbing stack that is behind the built-in.....so unless that's really the only way to make things work, there will be no passageway along that north living room wall. I had thought about moving the heat pump away from the laundry room window and over to the west, on the other side of the garage door, and then converting the laundry room window to a door and having that be our main entry on the back side of the house. I'm afraid it may look funny though to have two exterior doors right next to each other, and I don't want to lose the exterior access to the garage, so that door will have to stay put. I think the laundry room window will need to stay as it is and the dining room door should be the main entrance. We can redo the landscaping & put in a sidewalk that will direct traffic to that door from the driveway. One thing I'm not sure of is if I should do sliders or French doors? Is it weird to have a slider as the "front" door? And how do I handle privacy - the door faces the back yard, there is no house or anything back there that could see in, but I still want something to cover the door at night. Maybe built-in blinds would be best? I love the idea of moving the kitchen to the nook....it would be so nice to look out into the yard while working in the kitchen, but that would mean that we have to use the dining room as THE dining room. I don't think that will work if the dining room door is the entry and even if it weren't, that room is not really suited for a dining room table. It's too narrow and too much of a passthrough room. I tried it out briefly a year or so ago and it didn't work very well. bp's suggestion of closing off the current laundry/kitchen connection and moving the washer/dryer there looks good - we could open up a doorway to the right of the sink and shift the sink/stove/kitchen to the south. Opening up a doorway to the living room from the kitchen would let in light from the big picture window in the living room, so the kitchen wouldn't feel as dark. The rest of the laundry room space (north end) could be used as a mudroom and normal household traffic could go from the garage to the "dining" room and then on to the bedrooms or living room. The one thing I'm not sure about with that plan is where does my pantry go? I would like to have a decent pantry as we do a lot of gardening and canning in the summer and I don't have a basement or cellar to use for storage. Maybe it would have to go somewhere in the laundry area. Thanks again for the terrific suggestions and the kind comments about our little house. It's not perfect and definitely has its idiosyncrasies but it's also got a lot of character and charm - thanks for reminding me of that, I tend to take it for granted sometimes!