You ask questions and try different things. You did what you thought was best. It's not the end of the world. Whenever I've seeded a large area like that, I always had to follow it up the next year. No matter what, you won't get a perfect lawn in a few weeks when starting from scratch. I think the best thing to do now is put down seed in the particularly bad spots so you'll have less to do next year. Fescue will grow fine in Georgia. While many prefer warm season grasses, fescue isn't a terrible choice.

True lilies - like your Stargazer - grow a single stem from each bulb and produce a cluster (usually) of flowers at the top of that stem. Once the flowers have finished blooming or dropped off, you should cut off the stem just below this flower cluster. This will leave you with a tallish stalk/stem with leaves coming off but not much else :-) And this is the way it should be.......lilies are very seasonal plants and only provide a single flowering each year. To keep your lily alive and growing and able to produce flowers next year, it really should be planted outdoors. It is nearly impossible to keep lilies alive and healthy indoors for any more than a few weeks. Find a bright sunny location with well draining soil, dig a hole, carefully remove the soil containing the bulb (with the stem attached) from the pot and place in the soil so the top of the rootball is at soil level. Water in well and let the stem mature through the summer. This means allowing the leaves to dry and brown and fall off naturally. In fall, you can cut the now brown stem back to just a couple of inches. Next spring, a new shoot will emerge from this location and develop into a tall leafy stem that will produce flowers just like your Mother's Day gift did but later in the season......more like July. This is the normal bloom time for Oriental lilies like the Stargazer.

pm2: I don't know how typical my Ilex verticillata is, it's the only one I've ever known. I suspect it seeded itself in my parents' yard; there are many in the boggy areas down the hill. I remember my mother (who called it the alder - black alder is another name for winterberry) commenting that she was surprised it was growing here because they supposedly required moist conditions. There may have been underground streams, or spillover from the neighbor's plumbing. Now there's a septic leach field nearby so the soil should be moderately moist in that location. The winterberry is old and in decline and I've been letting it sucker to replace itself. You can see the old thick trunk and the new suckers coming up. This is the first year the suckers have fruited, although they're getting almost as tall as the original. The old shrub has a loose form, the suckers are tall and straight and just beginning to branch a little. The sucker foliage is darker than the old foliage. Sucker foliage on the left, old foliage on the right. Old lighter foliage behind the darker sucker foliage. I've been worried this year that I'd never seen seedlings of the Ilex. The leaves are similar to the leaves of Oriental Bittersweet and I was afraid I'd been ripping them out (I hate Oriental Bittersweet). But just recently I saw this seedling which might be Ilex verticillata in a garden bed, and I hadn't yanked it. I'm thinking that most of the yard is just too dry for the winterberry seedlings to survive, but this one landed in a bed I water moderately. Bottom line: I suspect that I have a reasonably moist microclimate here that the Ilex verticillata took advantage of. Whether the sucker foliage will remain dark is a mystery. Claire

I have to say that this is really killing me. I hate to pick these little pepper buds. There are so many of them; so many potential peppers if I let them grow. I've harvested a few immature peppers and I've eaten them. None were mature or had appropriate heat for their type, but they tasted good. Jalepeno: 16 plants, about 12 peppers Cayenne: 4 plants, all 4 have 4 to 6 peppers each Anaheim: 2 plants, 2 peppers Hungarian Hot Wax: 2 plants, 5 peppers Banana Peppers: 2 plants, 3 peppers Poblano: 2 plants, 1 pepper (walnut sized already) Whopper Peppers (Bell): 2 plants, 1 pepper, several buds Super Chili: 2 plants, no flowers or peppers yet Serrano: 4 plants, no flowers or peppers yet Habanero: 2 plants, no flowers or peppers yet My tallest plants are only 14 inches tall. The amazingly prolific (considering their youth) cayennes are only 7 to 12 inches tall. It's wet today, raining off and on. I don't want to "harvest" while the plants are wet. Tomorrow if there's no rain, I guess I'll go pick all those peppers and numerous little buds off. But it really hurts. I feel like murderer. If I don't pluck the peppers off, will it cause my plants growth to be stunted?