Chocolate mint sounds heavenly! I'm a sucker for chocolate, have a huge sweet tooth, and that's what makes dieting so difficult for me! I just love bakery and chocolate... preferably chocolate bakery! I usually grow some regular mint and also spearmint in the garden, along with oregano, basil, thyme, sage, cilantro, parsley and chives. The herbs are mixed in with the perennials, and the mint usually takes over and requires a drastic cutting back in summer! This spring, I have to dig out some of the oregano... it's overtaking the dianthus and coreopsis, and starting to get in the way of the garage door! Some herbs are just a tad bit invasive! Good zucchini bread is a great trade off for tolerating a few plants and bulbs! You have lucky roommates! They not only get to enjoy your baking... they also get to enjoy your flowers! I've heard that species tulips are fabulous for forcing... I may try some next year. I also want to try forcing Lily-Of-The-Valley... now, that would be a wonderful mid-winter pick-me-up with that heavenly scent! This is my first year forcing any bulb, and I've got a nice pot of hyacinths getting bigger every day, just begging to bloom and spread that lovely perfume! Without my indoor garden, I'd go winter wacky!

We installed Marmoleum Click in two bedrooms. I loved the idea of non-toxic allergy floors. One in Barbados, one in Silver Shadow. Just gorgeous. So easy to vacuum up. I was so pleased; the floors were easy to clean and wax with the suggested products. I took good care with them. I think it was installed about fourteen years ago. Three years ago, I noticed the floors started to have dents. Almost all the furniture had those protective sliders to protect the floor and make it easy to slide the furniture for cleaning. Even sliding a bed out to clean the floor underneath left a dent. I've heard you can use some mineral oil to smooth out the dents. I have one area where an antique desk leg literally went through the floor. It is suggested you can make a mix of the flooring and fill in the hole. I have not tried either method to repair the floors,

We've been running about 70% of our average monthly rainfall (average since we started keeping rain records for the garden in 2004). One benefit of keeping the rain records is putting it all in perspective - e.g. rainfall is very variable from year to year here - for instance we had 82mm. in June, compared to 119mm last year and 89mm for the 2004-2020 average. But the lowest rain amount we had in June was 43mm in 2016! We water new plantings and things in pots, but other than that, things are expected to survive on their own with natural rainfall! We did use soaker hoses in the first few years when we started the garden but, by 2004 when we started keeping the rain records, we had largely stopped using them and they have long since been removed or abandoned. It's tough coping with dry periods and we do sometimes water (by 'flooding' a dry area with the hose running gently in the bed) if somewhere is looking very stressed. Plants are generally tougher than we feared!

It was me, Ocotillo. I bought one for each of my parents for Christmas this year. (They are in their late 80’s and compute-literate). They are loving it! For those curious about the logistics, every Monday they each receive a question via email. they hit reply and type their response. Then they hit send. No attachments, PDF, etc. Very easy For them. One thing I do, though, is to make the questions more personal. For example, instead of writing “how did you meet your spouse?“ I will have the questions say “how did you meet dad?” Story worth provides a huge list of questions that they will automatically send (you get to see the question in advance). You can edit these questions or write your own. Story worth has some great questions, but I've found that I prefer to write my own. You absolutely don’t have to, but I want questions that are more geared towards my parents experiences. For example, this week the question to my dad was about his experience living in Korea during the Korean conflict. Another question was asking what it was like to grow up in New York City during the 1930s. My mother is a pianist, so one of my questions went back to her early days playing piano and what sparked that interest. All this to say that even though I gave this gift to my parents, I am really the one receiving a gift. Well, me and my five siblings. There aren’t enough words to describe how wonderful it is to read these stories. And, it has given them such enthusiasm and a sense of purpose. They’ve always had that, but it’s still nice to hear the excitement in their voices as they talk about each question.