I was reading some of these stories to my hubby tonight and he reminded me of our neighbor Jen's story and I decided I needed to share it with the stupid garden tricks... Our neighbor across the street has been divorced for about three years or so..and let his lawn go to pot as a result..he is a really nice guy, but lost interest when his family moved out. About 6 months ago, he fell in love with a girl about ten years younger than him, she was just 19...and she moved in. He aplogized all over the place to everyone that would listen about his robbing the cradle and that she was so young, but begging everyone to give them a chance and accept it because he loved her. She is JUST 19 and niave....but quickly we learned to love her too..she is a big sweetheart, even if a bit naive sometimes. Late this spring, when my hubby and I pulled in the driveway she followed behind us on foot and asked what we thought of what she had done to the yard. She had pulled and piled his mountains of weeds. I am not kidding in the back yard, the weeds were taller than cars and unused lawn equipement had sat there for years and they had grown around them while he grieved his lost marriage. What was once a nice yard had become an eyesore. She had done a ton of work and we were amazed..she said her hands had blistered even with gloves because the weeds in the back were as thick as saplings. She then asked if we had any weed killer and a sprayer she could borrow. My husband impressed with her work so far said he sure did..it was even already mixed up and it was extra good stuff. He walked with her to our garage and got it for her, and I went in the house. In the meantime, my daughter called and we began idle chit chat, I heard my hubby come in and sit in front of the tube and never thought a thing of it. I talk on the phone and walk about the house and found myself near a window. I looked out, and there was that Jen out there spraying her yard away in the front. I never thought a thing about it, admiring her determination at such a young age with the lost yard. Then she happened to turn towards me and I gasped when I saw which sprayer she had. My husband had given her the roundup sprayer...assuming she was killing the big weeds around the fence and dead lawn equipment in the back that she had been complained about..but instead she was spraying her front yard randomly. I quick hung up the phone and hollared at him to go stop her. He felt terrible...she was mortified and felt young and stupid..she didn't know there was such a thing as roundup..she thought it would only kill weeds,not grass..so she was spraying every weed she saw in the front yard. My husband told her to water quickly and see what happened..he felt terrible that he had misunderstood what she wanted. He always uses granular on the lawn weeds, not liquid so he was not even thinking that way. About two weeks later, these HUGE brown smiley faces of grass began appearing in the lawn. We walked over to apolgize to them but they were laughing bout it. Being just 19 and silly..every weed she had seen, she said..GOTTCHA and after she spritzed it with "weed killer" she drew a smiley face around it... it wasn't bad enough she had sprayed weeds in the grass with roundup but she had drawn prety faces to announce she was in power now....there were dozens of dead grass smiley faces all over the front lawn for passerbys to see. My husband couldnt even look each time we left home. He felt partly responsible. I just chucked..what else can you do? :)

There was certainly nothing stupid about that question! Welcome, Maryl. You have to go over to the Gallery section and look at some of the awesome collections folks have posted there. A few internet sellers have great Sansevierias, but for the most part, there is no combined, concerted effort to market or appreciate these plants. You sorta fall into love with them the more you see the different varieties. Then you seek out sources for your 'addiction'. I found a great source in my local Cactus & Succulent Society. Which is where I buy most of mine. I started with a pup off of my grandmothers plant, and now I have sixteen different varieties. Nearly all of them are easy growers, the hahnii varieties being a bit trickier. You can see a great photo of a S. hahnii in the upper corner of the start page. These are also known as 'birdnest' types. They are smaller in stature and more sensitive to water than many other varieties. You can go to your local library and request they bring in a copy of B. Juan Chahanian's "The Sansevieria Trifasciata Varieties". Great color pictures. There is another wonderful book by Hermoine Stover, can't remember the name, nor do I own it. Its been out of print for awhile. Found a copy in my local C&S library and enjoyed checking it out for a month. I'm not sure if libraries do that anymore, but when I was a young girl in a small town, I could request that our local library bring in from bigger libraries, copies of books I wished to read. As long as I had the author and title, pretty soon a copy would be there for me to check out. Our discussion pages go back for 10 pages, with 30 posts per page. You can read all about questions, issues, and progress reports as well as see all the photos we've taken in the last year on the Gallery pages. This forum runs a little slow compared to other GW forums, but there are some awesomely knowlegeable people who stop in here. Welcome, make yourself at home, pull up a chair an pour a cuppa.

Hi, Val, just thought I'd show you the botanicals I've framed, just to give you more ideas, but it sounds like you have it almost all figured out. I have enjoyed watching your room come alive! I got all my botanicals off Ebay too & decided to do ready-made frames and had custom mats cut to make the prints fit in my frames. I used 16x20 frames with inserts of 10x13 openings. My botanicals are slightly smaller than the insert, so to fill it out, I used black mats on all of mine & I love how it makes them look more important. That touch of black all around really makes the botanicals stand out, I think. Whether this is proper placement or not, I have no idea, but it worked for my eye. I have framed several sets of these in this same way & will show you all the pics of how I've used the black mat exactly the same way. These were standard black frames from Michaels & came with the ivory mats inside with the glass & these had a black border built in on the inner ivory mat already, I just added another custom black mat to fill in the space that I needed to fill to fit my botanical. I know you can't see all the details on these pics, but hopefully this will help you some: This one is open frames from Hobby Lobby & I bought standard mats & again added the custom black inner mat so the botanicals would fit. HL does a great job with adding mats & glass & very reasonable. These gold frames came from Tuesday AM & they had the ivory mats with gold edge already in them, along with the glass. All I did was again add the black inner custom mat & it was done. I found this to be the most cost effective way to frame these odd-shaped botanicals.

LOL littledog it's the footstool looking thing with the inverted cone (if you ever put your feet on the table you'll be shot). The top is horn and the base (black) is like hoof or something (I didn't buy it). It's actually a really lovely piece in person. Ok for you "rip it out" people...nope. That would be more than a huge expense, it would require we redo the floor as well (the floor has a band of walnut that goes around the room...if part of this goes, we need to add more to the floor and redo the band). If you are facing the fireplace, on your left side, what looks like wall is actually a very deep built in area. On the right there's a little jog around the chimney. Take out the wood...and you have exposed chimney that was not meant to be seen. We'd have to rebuild the wall, redo the floor and build something on the hearth, which wraps most of the built in shelf areas. Moula Moula moula! And not something we'd do given that we want to rip the whole thing out when the neighbors keel over.....umm I mean move to their next abode. At that time the wall goes, but not before. Here's a picture of one of the cats: You can see the "jog" around the hearth a bit here. It's a good 3 feet deep so there's a lot of space to deal with. Lynne, when we began the remodel this room was supposed to be storage only, and I ambitiously thought I'd paint it myself, so we crammed a bunch of things from all over the house onto those shelfs. They are normally carefully balanced out, and are going to be used to display some books (but they sit quite far back into the shelfs and don't crowd like they are now) and art glass as well as some native art we're beginning to collect. Although we're thinking of a phonograph collection instead, but either way, not much on each shelf so that it's not a huge pile of mishmash as they are now. There are no doors behind the design board. I've so far kept that fairly simple (the original owner had a picture of a lion slautering a lamb and a saint of some sort...). I have a picture of our basic decor (plus christmas) somewhere....(Running to photobucket): Normally it's just the mirror and the crystal candlesticks as well as uncle charlie or whoever makes the cut that week when I'm dusting the mantle. Obviously this is a weak attempt at Christmas (DS was just born and we'd spent 2 weeks in NICU then right about mid month he started getting sick...I barely got a few things up that year). The white snowmen are replaced by a simple white marble lion resting. I went with the basic mirror (who was it who hates mirrors?) anyhoo, to reflect the lake view and not to compete with the animals. I have since then picked up a larger one, but fairly similar. I want to keep that area "less done" verses more so that the focus really is on the other art. The art is fairly large and has great presence. The lion who will be over the lake view wall (the slanted wall above the chairs and horn table picture) is a great big old guy who captivates you when you see him. He adds weight to that side of the room. The above cheetah will also be on that side of the room, and he's a good heavy piece as well. The other cheetah is mounted horizontally on another of the walls, opposite the windows and provides balance. The windows will have either a deep colored matchstick blind inset or a roman shade, again inset. Very crisp and clean. I'm shooting for color on that wall that isn't as deep as the cabinets we see here...more like the landing: If it were as dark as the cabinets shown, it would be in effect the same as painting it brown...to much given the size of the wall and I'd lose the fireplace. It's a dilema isn't it :) I just can't leave it undone...it looks like an afterthought. Even painted cowslip would be better than nothing. I'd probably want to stain the mantel though in a deep shade, but that is actually "wood" so it can be stained easily. Makes a broken day bed seem like a simple task huh? :oP