What's going on above your yard, in that upper wall area? When I see that, I think... hmmm.... potential! You could do espaliered fruit trees like Mac said, or just run a plastic wrapped hog fence along the front and grow sweet peas or beans all along the length (or berries). I'd make one of those fabulous boxes for either side of my patio, plant something sweet smelling in them, and then run a couple posts with some wire or posts over the patio for summertime. Or a couple of citrus (looks like you could get at least two on either side) in pots/boxes by the patio. No worries on your speed, a garden is never done! Honestly, I'd go out and start filling up the boxes. Grab some quick plants from a nursery, put them in there.... The more you're out there tending to your new plants, the more you'll become accustomed to the space and get a better feel for what you want and what will work (sun/shade/bugs/etc). Where are you in Washington? I think of berries, blueberries could be planted above the retaining wall with some other perennial bushes and would provide fruit and beauty. Blackberries, maybe an apple, cherry or pear tree? Some of the best pears I've ever eaten came from a backyard orchard in WA. Cool weather crops... you could plant peas and beans and potatoes this fall... OOHHHH or the upper area could be your "squash/melon" zone!!! If you made a couple of areas with good soil (boxes or in-ground), you could plant squashes/melons up there and let them go wild.

I don't seem to notice anything one way or the other. Colors haven't been too dependent. I have had some blind shoots, and some of the roses are having buds die out before they mature into a larger size. This is normal to extent, but with so much rain it's noticeable....not a huge deal though. Evelyn has maybe 2-3 dead buds that were killed off during development, but not a big deal. Some of the cuttings I took don't have any blooms, but on the plus side I see new basal canes starting to come out from the base, so that's always nice. One of my WS2000 cuttings is putting out rather bizarre growth with far larger leaves and no blooms...yet at least, so I'm keeping an eye on that one. It's planted close to the parent plant that I got the cutting off that is doing fine. Could just be the weather, an oddity, or possibly a sport, but I'm keeping an eye on any traces of any kind of disease and/or virus just in case....seems fine though...just rather odd. I just dug up my Pat Austin cutting that I planted last year and seemingly wintered over fine and was putting out a lot of new growth then just died for inexplicably no reason whatsoever...this was the case for all of my Pat Austins, so I currently have no more of PA. :( I dug it up and the root systems was very dense and looked awesome...yet they still all died...clueless there. Everything else looks great though minus all the rain. I do have some yellowing leaves from all the water and some interior low lying blackspot since some of the roses are pretty dense right now, but it's nothing significant and I will thin them out somewhat after the 1st flush. Probably another week until I see a bloom, but I still expect a good show for the roses 1st flush inside the ground out of their pots...even my little Graham Thomas cutting in the ground has a bud on it so he seems to enjoy his environment next to his parent Graham Thomas which I didn't think would survive the winter after transplanting him into the ground later last September with a rather cut down root system. Big Graham Thomas is only about 2.5' tall right now, but looks awesome...still has those meaty canes from it's former self in Columbus, so I expect it to recover quite quickly and probably near it's former self by the end of the year.

Aunt Jen, Hope you come back here and see this reply to you! This might get a little long, but since every woman is different, I feel like you need to know MY circumstances. I always swore I would never take hormones! I was just going to tough it out. I am 47 and "think" I have been in perimenopause for almost 10 years. I was having super heavy bleeding and it had gotten to the point where I couldn't leave the house for a couple of days, and then it was 3 weeks on and one week off! ugh! My gyn had offered in the past for me to take birth control pills to help with the bleeding. Well I also had a tubal ligation 20 years ago and it just didn't settle right with me to take birth control pills. So I just kept "dealing" with it. Then last year it got bad enough that I was going to have a hysterectomy. I was all prepared, and my mother n law was diagnosed wtih Brain Cancer. My DH was the only caretaker living close by, so I knew I couldn't put him through caring for him dying mom and me trying to recuperate from a hysterectomy and still go to work everyday. So, my gyn and I decided I should try an endometrial ablation. It has been a miracle! I have not had one period in a year's time! woohoo! So I do still have my ovaries. Around Christmas last year, I started having strong heart palpitations in the middle of the night when I would get up to go potty. I couldn't believe that walking like 10 steps to and from the bathroom would cause such a thing, and I was convinced I was fixing to have a heart attack or something major! I went to a cardiologist, and convinced him to do a stres test on me, also a chemical one, and everything showed up fine. My blood pressure was up a little, so he put me on a beta blocker, but it's a low dosage. Then later in the spring, I started feeling sort of dizzy, light headed, like I might pass out...even had that feeling driving to church one morning...that really scared me! I just felt very strange and very wierd. And then at the same time, the hot flashes at night started...it felt like 20 times a night I was pushing the covers down, and then 5 minutes later pulling them back up because I was freezing. Not easy to sleep with all that going on!!! So, it got to the point, I was not getting much sleep, and then during the day, the wierd head feeling( i was convinced I had a brain tumor) was keeping me from functioning. I found myself waiting for my hubby to get home from work, and then asking him to drive me to Walmart or to the grocery store, etc...becaue I was too scared to go by myself, for fear of passing out somewhere. It was awful! Then, I had a breakthrough thanks to ThatHOmesite! There is a menopause message board on here, and I started reading threads there and OMG! There were threads about, wierd head feeling, palpitations, feeling like you are going to pass out...and most of these women were right around my age!!!! I couldn't believe it! So, I printed all those things out, and took them to my gyn at my annual checkup in June. I talked to her about it, and she knew I had never wanted to take hormones, and she was also concerned about be taking them so that they didn't start to build up the lining of my uterus that she had ablated. So she recommended I go to our compounding pharmacy and get a saliva testing kit...it was $170 out of my pocket, but I was so desperate, it was worth every penny! So I spit in a tube, and mailed it off to Oregon. A couple of weeks later, the results came back in and my hormones were WAY out of whack AND my adrenals were exhausted. So to answer your question...=), I am on a progeserone/estrogen cream that I use twice daily right now. This cream is made just for me according to my results. There is also a long questionnaire that you fill out about all your symptoms. I am also on DHEA and adrenal forte, to get my adrenals working the way they should again. I started all this about 6 weeks ago, and the difference it has made in my life has been life changing! I would say I am at least 50% better already, maybe even 75% and I feel so much stronger during the day, I have actually been able to start exercising. Couldn't even do that before! The hot flashes at night have all but gone away...there might be a couple sometime, but they are very mild and I seem to fall back asleep easier than I was. I still wake up during the night now, for what reason I don't know. I am going to try cutting out all caffeine, even though I don't consume much of it anyway. But it came down to quality vs. quantity of life for me, and I wound up choosing quality. I have seen my 91 year old mother, be miserable, with not much quality of life, and I just decided I would rather enjoy my life now, instead of just trying to go for quantity of years and be miserable later. I am still trying to take care of myself, in fact, I feel like doing that now where as before the hormones, I really didn't care! So I hope this somewhat helps you. Sorry it took so long to explain, just wanted you to know my own situation. You have to decide what's best for you!

Here's are some interesting questions for you to think about: What do you think gave him the idea that he could flirt with you like that and get away with it? What does that say about him and his perception of you? He's taking a very big risk with his behavior, so why would he jeopardize his job and fiance over someone he barely knows? You are new to this company and you know he's engaged. Why are you taking these kinds of risks? Negative first impressions are nearly impossible to change. You have now defined yourself as a flirt and potentially much more. I'm sure that most of the rumors have you more involved with your boss than you really are. That's how office gossip generally works. Your boss probably established his reputation as a player a long time ago. Try keeping things professional with him, and always steer the conversation back to work quickly. Have work related questions or items ready in your mind or on a notepad every day when you have to meet with him. Then get busy with work. Working hard and doing your job well is the best recourse right now if you are going to try and stay there. Avoid the coffee and other outside of the office get togethers that he suggests. Tell him you're busy or have other plans. He'll get the picture. If you think it's going to be weird for you, it will be worse if you continue this much longer. If you sleep with him, your problems will multiply and it will be difficult for you to effectively do your work there. Save your self respect first and then your job until you can find another one. Your boss isn't going to be paying your bills if he ends up firing you or if you both are terminated.