Deb, Their garden appears wonderful this year.! And it has been an awesome growing year so far! The racoons are great. Is the larger one holding a clam? I was at Swansons nursery yesterday around 10am. Swansons is sort of in the Big City of Seattle. There was one big fat racoon sauntering across the street headed into Swansons too. L and L have some beautiful columns set up at swansons also. I love the spires and the vase with lemons was one they were working on last year I believe, or was one they were carving on in one of the books that they are in. Thank you so much for capturing the spirit of a lovey place. About the Hypertufa Forum. Way back when there was only Garden Accoutrements, and Garden Junk. Too much concrete/tufa talk, and all the GA and GJ ideas were being buried, which was not ok!. And just as now there were a few outspoken people who jumped in, they hounded Spike for a place, and I believe rather than try to come to an agreement with all and possibly Lose the opportunity, they chose Hypertufa................There is so much that is not tufa that is talked about here. Happy casting, Dena

From our county which is a major producer of tomatoes, there used to be no problems with white flies. Winter got 'em. Then farmers started extending their tomato season (and getting more $$$ for the out of season vine ripened tomatoes) by growing their earliest tomatoes in poly houses, and along with the $$$ came some major white fly problems. Fortunately the tomato growin' is about twenty to thirty miles down wind of my roses.

Debra, those are Red Vinca,, they are annuals, and a few purple verbena is mixed in it too but cant see them hardly any more. Mantis,I wouldn't dream of sending this heat your way, but, I wish some cooler tempsw ould come this way.temp was 96 here today but felt like 100. weather man said,and I don't doubt it for a second Nancy,z6 secret friend has been here I think 4 years and hasn't multiplied at all here, plan to repot it in a differen t potting mix about sept, and see if it will do better next season.When I moved,I dug itup and pottd it with the soil it was in, so maybe it will do batter next year, I had poor soil where it was at, and the soil he r e is worse.cant make a hole in this soil with a hatchet, as I tried that,

Carol- better fragrance LEH or BG?? Sheesh. I don’t know. They both smell great. It’s still early on for our plants, but I think I’d personally go with Blue Girl. Today. LOL That could totally change tomorrow! ;-) OTOH LEH has LOTS more buds and blooms than Blue Girl, so on the whole is more fragrant. I also like the foliage on LEH better. Blue Girl opened some more today and it is a lovely bloom. I tend to like more of the cupped/rounded blooms, things like LEH, but BG makes my heart happy. I’ll take another picture of it when I get home today (I’m checking in on the grand dogs right now). Kristine- I’m so with you on the rodents. They are awful and have cost us a LOT of $$ and aggravation the last few years. And then they start eating our roses? Grrrr. Although I’d never get Al to move to Canada. He had to travel there for work for a few days last month. Was NOT pleased to see snow on the ground still. Total Florida boy. LOL oh!! Our Florentina is blooming. Eeeee! Knock me over with a feather. I had told Al we wouldn’t have any blooms this year either. He went and looked close at it a few weeks ago and said “oh Shan! guess whaaaaat?!”. We had moved it out of the whiskey barrel it was in last year to a spot it apparently reeeeally likes on the fence. It’s been growing like crazy, but I was so surprised by buds. We only got it from Heirloom spring 2017. I’ll get a picture of it too. It’s such a fantastic honest to goodness real red red. Can’t wait to smell it too. :-)