Hi Westy, Glad to see you made it out here! And you wound up in a great area! Don't know if you remember or not, but I'm another of the Illinois Expatriates! Family still in Crystal Lake! Don't know how much snow you got up Boulder way yesterday, but now you're gonna get to see for yourself how snow "works" out here! In a few days it'll be gone! Over here in Thornton they're predicting 70 by Friday, Boulder won't be quite that warm but should be close--and with sun between now and then almost all of it will be gone before then anyway. Don't tell any of your old friends from Illinois about our Magically Disappearing Snow or they'll all want to move out here too! It's gonna take a few years to get things really going at your new house, but I think it would be fun to have a blank slate to start with! It lets you do it all exactly the way you want it without needing to tear out old stuff to make revisions to somebody else's Vision! Did you wind up bringing starts for any of your hostas along with you? If you haven't already done this, before you start with any really major planning you should check out what kind of watering restrictions Boulder County (if that's where your new house is) will have this summer--and probably ongoing from here on out. At least this last storm will have helped the snowpack in the mountains get up closer to 100%. A month or so ago we were only at about half of normal! With the Heuchera, are you talking about the "regular" green leaf with red flowers ones, or the "dark leaf" varieties that come in all sorts of leaf colors? If the latter, you're going to find you need to grow those in mostly shade or very filtered sun out here--like hosta! With the high altitude sun the leaves burn quite easily, especially in winter when they're dormant. So if you're into "collecting" those like different varieties of hosta you might want to start out slowly until you start to get some trees going that will give you more options for shade. The regular green leaf ones do pretty well in any light conditions, but I've found they need quite a bit of water if they're in a lot of sun! If you are into the "colorful" varieties, I'm pretty sure you're going to need to order them online to find more than a few of the most basic ones! With vines, and especially since you're gonna be in I Want To Get It All Covered In Green FAST mode, a word of warning! Most of the commonly found, fast growing vines around here are also going to wind up being totally invasive after a few years and you'll have them "covering" things, but also going everywhere where you don't want them--things like Virginia Creeper, Boston Ivy, Trumpet Vine, etc., they start to spread underground, and some of them also start to seed all over the place. If you have a BIG yard with fences or something around the edges, that might work, but in a "normal" size yard, I recommend staying away from them, or at least be aware that you'll be fighting them forever if you decide to put them in. This has been discussed multiple times around here and the best option people have come up with for a pretty fast growing vine that won't bite you back is grapes--and there are some good grapes that are hardy out here--and give you (hopefully) something good to eat in addition to the Green! I have 'Reliance', a red table grape, but I'm not sure it gets enough sun to ever get grapes--only a couple years old and I haven't gotten anything edible yet! Concord also grows VERY well out here if you're into juice or jelly! And there are others. There have been a couple discussions of different grape varieties around here, and, in case you haven't noticed it yet, the best way to search on GW/RMG is to go to the bottom of the main RMG page and right next to the little box that says "today's birthdays," all the way down on the bottom, there's a search box where you can just search the Rocky Mountain Gardening forum rather than all of GW. So if there's something you want to find past threads about, like grapes, just go down to that box and put it in there! Clematis is another possibility for a "good" vine, and there are some truly spectacular ones with "dinner plate" size flowers! And, below, I'm linking an old thread (not THAT old - just a year ago!) where people were listing the places they use to buy things--both local in Denver and online. So check that out to get you started with a few of the local places. They're not really "that" close, but Timberline and Paulino's are probably the two biggest "real" nurseries closest to you. Harlequin in Boulder is also mentioned, and maybe it's just me, but I went there for the first time last year with Barb and I was kind of underwhelmed! Maybe it was just because I had heard so many good things about it from other people, and maybe it was because I'm used to Timberline and Paulino's, and, by comparison, I just didn't think it was very impressive. For you and anybody else who might go back and reread that thread, an UPDATE on Paulino's! Cheryl, the perennial grower, has now left there, and as of last word the only perennials they're going to carry anymore are the things they can "buy in!" That means they'll have a very limited selection--and have pretty much just the same stuff "everybody else" has! No more variety with a couple dozen different Penstemon and stuff like that! They will still have some of that stuff this spring--the stuff Cheryl had started last year for 2013 sales, but when that's gone it'll (probably) just be the very basic perennials. Nursery should still be a good selection! So as of this summer, Timberline winds up being pretty much the only place left in town where you can get a WIDE variety of perennials locally. (And now that High Country has "changed hands," I doubt that he'll be carrying "High Country plants" anymore!) One more garden center on the "north end" of town (south for you!), that I just discovered last fall when somebody (was it you Misty?) posted that they were having a 25-cent sale on all remaining perennials is O'Toole's on Wadsworth. They have several locations around the metro area, I haven't been to the others, but other folks have said they liked them in the past! Besides getting a couple flats of perennials for just 25 cents, I was pretty impressed with the place--and the couple people I spoke with! Considering it was the end of the year and they were just getting rid of what they had left, I was surprised to find that they had more than the "basic varieties" that I was expecting to find. I'll probably go back this spring/summer to check them out more, and I will very definitely be watching to see if thay have THAT good of a sale again this coming fall! Gotta go! Hope you'll find time to come and post here to ask, and to help answer questions--and just to comment in general about things! Welcome to Colorful Colorado, Skybird Here is a link that might be useful: Your favorite seed and plant sources

I think the experts are going to want to know what species of palm you're talking about. Can you post some pics? You say "several of the leaves are turning yellow"... are they the oldest leaves? That would be natural. Any idea of how established the palms are? Were they recently transplanted by the seller of the home for curb appeal? If so, its possible that you have too many fronds/leaves for a newly transplanted palm. You say you had them "trimmed"... if that meant removing the oldest leaves, that is the right thing to do. But recently transplanted palms should have only two or three newest leaves emerging. All others should be cut off. By the way, the "needle palm" makes a wonderful under-story shrub palm and is completely dependable. It grows as a clump and only gets to be about 10 feet tall. There are both blue and green varieties available.

We have had our Trivection for about 4 years now. I'll try and offer some thoughts. Give up using it for small batches of pre-packaged baked goods. They only take a few minutes to bake anyway and speedcook just will not give them time to rise. Same is true for an advantium. For larger things like roasts, turkeys, baked chicken, casoroles or several perfect baked potatoes, it works miracles in record time. For the deli pizza, get yourself a $15 pizza stone from WalMart. Set the oven to conventional bake 450deg and let it pre heat. Then change the temp to the package directions and put the pizza in on the preheated stone. Perfect crisp crust every time. The difference between one rack convection and multi rack is, one rack uses only the rear heating element and fan after preheat. Multi uses the top and bottom elements and fan. My trivection will not maintain temp in the single rack convection mode after it preheats. Its a software bug and ge will not replace the controller. I am told newer ovens (yours hopefully) do not have this problem. Remind me not to buy new release products from GE again.... We love our trivection oven but still use the advantium far more.

Hi- Hope you enjoy your new pond, it sounds like it is quite established. I would suggest watching it over the next year, so you can find out what flora and fauna are in it and it's own pattern. Murky water especially at this time of year does mean that something is thriving in there--so your amphibians could be turning up the mud. And of course their offspring will need to eat too and green water has all the nutrients they need. I have a decent size pond and no filters. But there is a pattern to the clarity of the water depending upon the time of year (around June/July it goes very clear for awhile, then murky again and later clears when the weather goes cold.) It has never been so murky (except early in the first year before the plants were established) that it was unnattractive. Snails seem to clean up the pebbles in the beach and the birds come down to eat the snails. Really like watching grey wagtails coming down looking for snails. Also, you might have oxygenators that help keep the water clear, and you might not. So see what comes up. If you put in new plants that will also make the water green for while too. If you put chemicals in, you really won't know if that is mucking up your eco-system. So other than some barleystraw (organic if you don't buy the expensive pond-versions) I would just watch it and see what you discover. If it doesn't have large fish in it, and you want to put some in, I would also suggest waiting and seeing what your pond has. Who knows, you may have a thriving crested newt population and you don't know it yet! Similarly frogs and toads needs all the help they can get these days so a few ponds free of hungry fish can be important. Have to admit too, I don't get blanket weed anymore but I do kind of miss it---it was always a great excuse to get 'hands on' in the pond and see what was it. Great for the compost heap too. Have fun!! Chip