Hi guys! I am free! Free I say! ...lol... The wedding went great. It was a beautiful ceremony and an awesome reception,everything went over very well,all the hard work was worth it! :) Sue give me a few days to get caught up here and I will be back to checking in daily and we can get started on our project again.I have a ton of sprouts sitting there looking at me like " Well what are you waiting for?"...lol... Kathy,it sounds like you and Cliff got it all under control,that is great! :) I would love to see pics,I can imagine it will be very beautiful! :) Medo!!!!!! HI!!!!! I miss you too! I seen your pics at ws forum,WOW!!!! I figured you and I would have a ton of success being we were in doubt we would end up with very much...lol...go figure! Don't worry it will all grow fine for you,you should have a nice jungle in the next couple months,make sure the kids leave a trail of bread crumbs so you don't lose them in the yard...lol.... I have been trying desperately to keep up with my sprouts,since we are now into warmer temps,I am pulling jugs with sprouts aside like crazy! I was wondering around the yard today ,looking at potential beds. We aren't ready to plant our annuals out here yet,but I would like to get a jump start on my perennials,some of them are out growing the jugs! (*yikes!*)So for the next few days I will be digging. The robins have been following me around the yard,they see me grab my shovel and boy do they come running...lol... Well I am off to neeb around a little to see what has been going on....hugs everyone!

HI Erin! Welcome to the wonderful fun of gardening and also, bless you in your new home! Where are you located? Are you thinking of only planting hostas or are you thinking of having a few other plants in there with them? Some contrast and especially color when the hostas are not blooming makes everything look really nice. Hostas are quite happy to have friends among them. My lot is .1 acre and that includes the house. So I do not not get hundreds of hostas or anything else (except slugs). It is pretty shady from my neighbors' trees though the bed in front of the house is in full sun. That is where daylilies and irises go. But I do have at least 25 cultivars of hostas and am planning some more. The advantage to a small garden is you have to plan what you put in it -- or else be prepared to pull out things to give away so you can make room for new acquisitions. And divisions from your older plants! The fun is, you don't get everything at once that you will ever have. Wait a while and put things in a few at a time (annuals will do to fill in places) and then you can have the pleasure of learning about new species and cultivars and acquiring them as the years go by. You will get different plants, hostas or otherwise, from various sources and they will always remind you of the person who gave it to you, swapped with you, or the trip you took when you bought one or another plant(s). I like to have some color spotted here & there so I use impatiens (I can hear the perennial people groaning) and I also have some Heron's Pirouette perennial begonias---these get about 2.5-3" tall when they bloom and have long lasting scapes ( flower stalks), arching gracefully --- here, from Aug till frost. In May, there is old fashioned bleeding heart -- both white and pink/white. These die back in the heat of summer so the hostas, which are getting big, fill in the bare spots the bleeding hearts left. I have a few liriope here & there because they are OK with dry shade & tree roots, and they are not boring if you only use a couple. You can get them with several shades of variegated foliage, and white or medium or dark blue flowers. And they bloom in very late summer/fall when not much else does, in the shady garden. I live in NJ overlooking the Delaware R just north of Trenton. I use astilbe, too--from white to pink to deep red frothy flowers in late spring and early summer. They are also beautiful with the hostas. Right now there are crocuses that have just opened yesterday (when it was sunny) and there will be squills and grape hyacinths, and daffodils are in the sunnier spots. I don't bother with tulips---though I love them, they are an expensive way to feed deer. I have lily of valley under the Norway spruce tree (which has had its lower branches removed to give sun to the bed under it) this is a rather dry shade bed---however the trunk of the spruce is ringed with Gold Standard hostas that are quite happy. The bed gets compost thrown over it every spring and it has sweet woodruff in there along with the hostas, and little spring bulbs such as crocuses & squills, and bigger ones ie English bluebells. Lily of the valley would like to take over the world, but there is easy way to stop it---dig some out. After it blooms, so you can have the wonderful flowers! I try to always have something blooming somewhere in the yard. It does not have to be a lot, just a bit--some white or pink flowered thing next to a dark leaved hosta brightens the corner. I have scilla Hispanica which is "wood hyacinths" -- you can get them in pink, white or blue, and they are very shade tolerant. They will bloom in May (here) and do very well next to hostas too. When the hosta leaves get bigger, the scilla is dying back for the summer. In our yard we have red shale which breaks down to clay in some parts, and what the locals call "the brown sand" in the other areas. In one little lot! Some kind of interesting geology was going on here a long time ago! We now have dark black soil over both, after years of digging in manure, leaves, & compost. You can ameliorate clay quite a lot with gypsum. We dig our yard's leaves right into our beds, around the plants, in fall. When we make a new bed, which we did a lot of after we got the new septic system, we take three years to do this digging, instead of planting things right away. The soil in those beds is wonderful. We also have a compost bin in the back corner---this is not rocket science and do not let compost hobbyists scare you! All you have to do is make a circle a yard or more across with sturdy wire, and throw in the leaves, weeds, and the non-meat kitchen scraps. Also grass clippings if you do not put weed killer and poisons on the lawn. Kitchen stuff meaning plant material such as peels, rinds, stems, leftover salad or other veggies that waited too long in the fridge to be eaten, and cut up toilet paper rollers. Turn it twice a year and when you turn it, take the well-composted stuff out & use it in your garden. When the ground is warm in summer, we just take the kitchen compost bowl out & dig the stuff right into the garden next to the plants. It breaks down very quickly in summer and the nutrition goes right into the plants. You said you have children---by all means, set aside a place for their own garden! Especially if you can make it in a sunny area. Let them plant veggies (then they will eat them) and make it easy ones such as lettuce and beans. You can grow beans as a little tent to save space. Or you can make a taller "tepee" with poles and leave an opening for the kids to crawl in under the beans. You can take a potato from the farmer's market (the organic stand; it won't have been sprayed with anti-sprouting stuff) and cut it up so the pieces have eyes. Just stick them in the ground a few feet apart. Then the kids can have their own potato plants. Well, you have heard enough from me! Once again, welcome to years & years of great fun!

I Found the Garden Web when we started remodeling this house. All I can say is I have the most fabulous kitchen ever thanks to Kitchen forum. In the 2 years it took to do the kitchen I have lurked over here in cooking and not only found a great group of people but found I could be a much better cook because of all of you. In that 2 years I have replaced almost every cooking item with thing I found out about on this forum. I gave 11 boxes of kitchen stuff to my DD to give to a lady who lost everything in one of the Ca. fires near her home last year. I now order things on the internet that I would not have know about if not for this forum. KA, PenzeyÂs spices and the most recent Bennington Pottery, thank you Tricia, I love the muffin pans. I bought the book, 'Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day' but havenÂt had time to even look at it yet. The only thing I ever ordered before was PlochmanÂs mustard for DH because I couldnÂt get it locally. I am now on a first name basis with the UPS guy Mike. A big Thank You to all of you, Claudia

Thank you all for such kind thoughts and for sharing your losses as well...od but it helps dosen't it? Brooke...I knew I was loosing the baby when I read about your loss but wasn't ready to say anything (there was still a small chance but we were given to expect the worse). Ya, it sucked and still does...and I had a long chat with God about what the heck else he wants from me...but we will go back to hoping to find a miracle I guess. I guess better earlier than later (I'd only purchased ummm a dozen outfits, a new down comforter for the crib and a new car...) than at 20 (hugs cheri!) but we too had names (mary alice and/or gunther paul). but this is depressing, so let me paste back on my happy smile and say this... you get a lot of sympathy from your workers when you go through all this crap...and they're busting their arses this week heh heh (ok that could also be due to a few grumpy calls I made, but who cares...they're back). Tile guy (Joe....always a dear) called and asked if he could work on some of the other tile jobs so we'll have an entry, trim on the chickens, and the powder room done by Monday. We put the guy from the office to work and he's kicking bum on the paint issues and drywall (painters still haven't shown up) and we're getting our wood floor tomorrow :) so folks are getting the word that I WANT IT DONE!!!! :) We template next Thursday for counters (and on Monday for stainless counters) and I'm giving VP lessons this weekend :) Gad I might have a house...I'm holding out hope :o)