Thank you, Kathy, for those awesome pictures ... such a great variety! I'm always impressed with Symphony, but I don't have the right climate. Thank you, Kitty, for that funny story ... that made me laugh. In our neighborhood, we have a few Dr. Huey growing.... folks don't know that it's not the original rose! I have a bed with leaves AT THE BOTTOM, but the top is dry and alkaline with horse manure: zero BS nor mildew, even on Golden Celebration. I have another bed with tons of leaves on top. Acidic wet surface breeds fungi easily ... whatever roses I put in there, get black spot, plus mildew (no matter how wet). The only clean ones are Knock-out, Flower Carpet, and Kim Rupert's Lynnie. Lynnie rose is amazing: It's 100% clean, zero mildew, BS resistant, while other perennials get mildew in that wet bed. Recent roses are far more disease resistant than other plants. See Lynnie, bred by Roseseek (Kim Rupert) below:

My memory fails me today, but there is a very nice story about the mouse that dove inside the Douglas Fir cone. It is a fairly common one that I have heard some kiddos retell to their friends. Also, if Bleeding Heart is native, there is a good story that involves moving parts of the flower to tell the story. I will try to connect with the young folks who told the stories - they are now in their twenties....and hope that they remember.

We're in Houston inside the loop near downtown. We decluttered by boxing up at least 2/3 of the drawer/closet stuff and putting it in storage. We also removed some of the larger furniture and tv and put in storage or the garage. We had 3 dogs that we kept in the air conditioned garage during the day and any time we had a showing. We freshly painted a few of the walls that we finished up some trim work on. We staged my utility room as an office/utility room with a desk and storage cabinets. We did a lot of outside work to give it some good curb appeal like installing a driveway gate and landscaping. Our neighborhood was very ecclectic. We had historic houses next to new construction. Our house was basically a tear down when we bought it. They had just finished building a $500K home across from us. They built a similarly priced home down the street recently so the values were steadily increasing. The vacant lot next to me sold for $186K. Our house was an older cottage style that was very small so it sold in the medium range for that neighborhood. The great quality it had was a large lot to where the house could easily be added on to. We were very lucky that it is a neighborhood where every time you add square footage onto a house, it turns into pure profit way above what the square footage costs to add. We have since moved into another older house in a neighborhood of well kept ranch homes and expect to see a similar trend of increasing home values.

I’ve lived in 2 lofts with high ceilings- one at 14’ the other at 15’. Loved them and prefer them to my little small roomed 8’3” ceilings now. The lofts were open spaces, didn’t have issues with cooking smells (just need good exhaust), was able to heat just fine (in NYC and Boston). These were in old buildings- former 1880’s fire house and 1900 factory respectively. Sounds bounce around in a high ceiling space, so it’s good to make sure you have plenty of rugs, soft furnishings and drapes to help muffle sounds. Long drapes are gorgeous against tall windows. Giant walls mean you have excellent space for giant art, tapestries, rugs on the walls…. Can’t wait to see what you come up with. Please keep us posted!