Mitch, When you find that yard, just spray the bermuda grass monthly with Round-Up until it is all gone. (grinning) I guess the neighbors would just fall over in shock, wouldn't they? We are removing the bermuda from out thick red clay soil the hard way....by hand, a little at a time. Each year I dig out some, enrich the soil and expand a bed the includes a mixture of trees, shrubs, ground covers, etc. Then, it still takes a LOT of vigilance to keep the bermuda grass from creeping back in. Slowly, the mixed borders (heavily mulched, of course) are getting bigger and the area of bermuda is getting smaller. That's only half of it, though. Since bermuda can't handle shade, we've planted about 20 trees around the house, partly in the hope that we'll eventually shade out the bermuda and can then replace it with shade-tolerant ground covers. It is starting to work, but the trees have only been in the ground 7 or 8 years, so we have a ways to go before they are large enough to provide a large area of heavy shade. Also, we plant rye grass every fall (and we seed it more thickly than the directions say to) as a fire protection measure. One good thing about the rye grass is that it shades the bermuda a LOT in the spring, and this means the bermuda is slow to start growing in the spring. (I'm all for ANYTHING that slows down bermuda.) We're in our 10th year here. I hope by the time we've been here 20 years (around DH's retirement), we won't have any bermuda grass left. If we get rid of all of it before then, I'll be even happier. If I had it all to do over again, I would have had a guy with a bulldozer take up the top 4 inches of the yard, dirt and all, and remove ALL the bermuda before we even built the house. Granted, I would have had to pay to have topsoil brought in, but fighting whatever weed seed would have been in it would not have been as bad as dealing with the bermuda grass. Dawn

Ilene, I can feel for you on this. Like Dawn, I have a brother who my parents support. Richard is 36, will turn 37 in February. He got married the first time about 15 years ago. They had a son together and she had two children from previous relationships. Well, long story shortened, the marriage ended, she has the child. He's not allowed to see him, our family isn't allowed to see him. My brother doesn't pay the child support he's ordered to and is a deadbeat dad. After he moved from Texas to Oklahoma with my parents following the divorce, he began getting into trouble a lot. He was 20 at this point. My parents have paid many fines, court costs, probation costs,and restitution along with supporting him because he will not keep a job. He was doing drugs and still is, to my knowledge. He continued to live with my parents supporting him until about 5 years ago. Well... he doesn't live with them any more.. the support though... my parents dealt with their home being surrounded by police looking for him, police at the door at all hours, etc. Well, after I moved to Chickasha from Texas, my parents decided to buy another home. So I bought the one they had from them. I was making monthly payments and when I moved from Chickasha, I owed only $6000 on it (another story, well, part of it will be told here..but not all in interest of not deluging everyone with my previous life). In this time, my parents had bought my brother about 5-8 cars, which he tore up. So, about three years ago, he marries this woman he'd known for three (yes, that's 3) days and had only met face to face one day before he married her. They moved out of state for about a year and seemed to be doing okay. Then they suddenly move back here. Well, they were bickering with her mother about the custody of her other two children, which her mother had been raising for the last two years. DHS got involved and removed the two girls from her mother and my niece from them. I helped my mother become foster parent for my niece and the two step-nieces. My parents are older and not in the best of health. So with three children ages 5,2, and 5 months, they needed me involved on a daily basis because of my parent's health. Eventually the two older girls were given to their biological father in Arizona. Which wasn't entirely a bad thing in my opinion. Those two, particularly the oldest, were very much in need of discipline, which as foster parents we were unable to give. This child at 5 years old would slap an adult in the face. Along with throwing the most horrible tantrums. And that's just the mildest of her behavior. We couldn't spank, nor do anything but put her in a time out chair... but not in a corner.. for a minute per year of age. We could not physically restrain her, so if she didn't want to sit in the chair, she wouldn't. But I digress... So, we have my niece, who was at this time, a year old. My mother is desperate to keep her and understandably so. So she's paying my brother's rent behind my daddy's back. She's providing all of their living expenses. They still aren't working their steps to get the baby back. And they're getting kicked out of another house because my mother was giving my brother the money to pay the rent because she couldn't be seen to do so. Not only because of my daddy, but because of DHS too. But he wasn't paying the rent, he was buying weed and meth. Well, about this time, my husband at the time and I were having lots of problems. He was addicted to gambling and porn and I had put him out. I had excused myself as my niece's caregiver. My now ex-husband started stalking me, shining floodlights in my windows at night, threatening me, trying to have my children taken by DHS, which wasn't going to happen and was rather foolish on his part since DHS was in my house on a weekly basis because of my niece. Well... one night he really snapped about 8 months after I put him out and he tried to kill me and ended up stabbing himself in the throat when the police cornered him. You'd think he'd go to jail after leaving the hospital, right? Apparently not. After my daughter and I turned an aisle in Wal~Mart and came face to face with him, I decided it was time to move. So my kids and I moved to Edmond where my best friend lived and my ex didn't know anything about where we'd be. My three oldest kids were going to stay in Chickasha and continue paying for the house there because they all three had jobs there and my second to oldest was in his Senior year of high school. (The third child was my 28 year old niece that I raised with my children). This is where we get back to my bother... so, my house is there and my kids are living in it and paying the remaining owed on the house as monthly rent, making the same payments I had been. Well, my mother decided that instead of paying my brother's rent, she would just give him the house I'd been paying for. I wasn't using it, right? She had the utilities shut off there, then my niece that I raised, who was named for my mother and myself, her first name being my mother's, tried to get the utilities on in her name again, she told them that they were trying to steal her identity. So they were investigating and would not turn anything on there. So, the kids had no utilities, and I move them up here with me. I was going to sell the house, which was in my name for taxes,for enough to cover what I owed my parents, plus 20% of the profit as a thank you because they'd held the note without any extra interest, though I'd paid the interest on their new home as well (they sold me the house for the price, including interest, on their new house and used my payments and them adding double payments (resulting in triple payments each month) to pay theirs off faster, but I was still paying the full interest, didn't mind because it helped all of us out) and the rest would be mine for what I had put into the house. Well, my mother called me on a weekly and then daily basis for three months. She and my brother ran off everyone that I sent over there to view the house. Apparently my brother was already squatting in it. Well, I finally signed the house back over to them.. with no profit. I just got tired of dealing with it. She move my bother right in, provided utilities and groceries for him, etc. Telling DHS that he was buying the house from them. I was finished with the whole thing at this point.. and have only spoken to my mother twice in the past 9 months. I love my parents very much. I just get really tired of seeing him use them. See, my daddy isn't my biological father and I've never expected to have any of their estate when they pass. Now don't get me wrong, he's always treated me as his child and always told me that I would share equally. He's raised me since before my birth. But he has a daughter from his first marriage and my brother is his. I've always been able to make my own way. In their will I'm, at last knowledge, executor of their estate, but have already told them that I would prefer not to be left anything and that I will not fight with my step sister and brother over things or money.That I would administer the estate and manage the trust so they couldn't just sell everything off and blow it, but would not fight with them over anything else, including anything left to me. My daddy gave me his name and his love. That's my inheritance. The last time my mother called me it was to cry because my brother had turned against her yet again (this was a month before my wedding and three week before my second to oldest son's graduation). Blaming her for everything that's gone wrong in his life and that she's taking a second child from him. I listened to all this for about 45 minutes. Never once did she ask about any of my children, or my wedding plans, or my son's graduation. I hated to be callus, but I told her I didn't want to hear it as this is a repeating thing with him. And that if she couldn't call with some interest in how my children and I are and how my new marriage is going (yes, they've met Cliff, but couldn't take the time to get to know him well because they were so caught up with my brother) then to please not call. I'm the one she comes to when she wants to complain about how badly my brother treats them. When she wants someone to step in and be the one to say "No more" and clean up the mess but then she turns around and does it again. So, I live my new, very happy, very peaceful life here and they live theirs there. I still love my parents.. and even my brother. I just can't stand seeing what they allow him to do to them. Sorry that got so long. There was so much unsaid, even so. But this gives you an idea. I have tried many times to convince my mother she's doing no one a favor in allowing this to continue... in enabling it. And I've reached a point in my life that I can't continue to use all my time and energy cleaning up the messes created by this awful symbiosis. I've spent most of my life doing so. My parents have helped me occasionally, but they have ALWAYS been paid back every penny plus some as my thanks for doing so. I use tough love with my own children. To the extent of packing my oldest son's stuff up and being very serious about putting him out if he did not have a job in two weeks after he graduated from high school. He had one in a week and his own place a month later and has been on his own two feet since. The last I heard from them was when she called crying that day. In the whole of that call she never asked once about my children.. her grandchildren. Before I asked her not to call unless she had some interest in how we're doing, I mentioned the time for Jarret's graduation to be told she couldn't come because she'd be in court again on my niece's custody. She'd be right down the street from where the graduation was held and it was about 2 hours after court would end completely for the day. And was told that she could not come to my wedding because my niece would be on a visit with her other grandmother (in OKC) and she needed to stay nearby because the visit ended at 3... my wedding was at 5 and 30 minutes away from where the visit was to be. I'm not trying to whine here. I'm a grown woman and handle my own life. Just please realize that if you have other children, whether they expect to inherit or not, it is painful to them to see you have to deal with something like this as well. The way I see it, I am estranged from my parents by my mother's choice. I didn't ask her not to do what she does. All I asked was that if she calls, to do so with the intent of visiting and learning how my children and I are doing. I pray for them all every night and worry every day, but doing so is much easier to bear than hearing my mother cry every time I talk with her about someone who leeches from her and everyone around him.. and she allows him to do so. So, please, don't be so upset about needing to be tough with your son. And if you have other children, I know it can be painful to them to see their parents taken advantage of. I wish my parents would understand that. Kathy

It's been a very light rain all day here in Arlington, Rain gauge doesn't show much. I did enjoy weeding for 30 mins and walking the dog for 20. He and I were blissfully damp and cool. Supposed to be some real rain tonight. I remember about 4? years ago when 6 Flags flooded from a heavy rain in late July. I lost a number of roses, and it was sad for 6 flags, but the summer sure was easier to take with that break. Wishing y'all further south some of this bliss....c\

Summers kill phals for me so I do not grow them. I have in the past not heated until mid 40's. The vandas suffers the most. There are some dens that need the cold so they stay out. The rest, onc, Catt, dens, enc. etc suffers less than the vandas but were harmed. Enough to reduce production. It affected the number of flowers and the size. I do not grow orchids for their leaves. It is about flowers. So Jane if you do not mind the smaller flowers and less of them you are on the right track. Simply whatever your production is at lower temps, would be more if they were kept at 50 or better. Certainly there are exceptions. My brassavolas that are in the landscape attached to trees stay and do well. A Florida commercial grower informed me that orchids on trees can take lower temps as the trees provide a natural anti freeze near the bark of trees. I think that means you get a pass with temps a few degrees lower. And the terete vandas are bulletproof.