I love lilies for their stately appearance and scent... but hate the red lily beetle battle. We live along a river and worry about pesticide run off. So there are only two clumps in our yard. However, we do have many varieties of daylily. These are one of my favorite flowers... but my DH is not crazy about them. He thinks the long slender leaves and the same green tones look boring. The compromise was to place them among plants with different leaf textures and colors. And I have to agree with him that this helps to hide the ratty look of day lilies as they mature. (You're so right about that, Kevin.) A favorite new day lily is H. 'Light the Way' which I found at Bloomingfields Farms in Gaylordsville, CT. These are magnificent! The stems are very tall, which means the plant can be tucked behind shorter plants and the whitish blossom will peek out above its neighbors. Here is what LtW looked like the other day in our gardens. The flower color is more like the second shot...green and white tones. One "problem" ..... day lily clumps can get enormous and crowd out other things, even when divided. That happened in our small yard. The 6 tiny Hemerocallis 'Malaysian Monarch' fans that I planted years ago spread like the plague. We gave most of them away to a friend with lots of property. Molie

Hello j9sgarden, so as for other symptoms I also had discharge that I thought was Bacterial Vaginosis. I don’t do well with antibiotics and I heard this can also rectify itself. It just was not. Also I had lost my sister this past summer and had to move in with my mother and brother to help us all cope with her loss. So my issues took a back seat. We were all grieving. I started noticing the cramps were getting worse. I was getting flooding during my period for a couple days which I also researched on the web happens to some women during perimenopause with the hormone fluctuations. I was getting my period around every 45 days or so. So there was just a lot of stress in my life and I started researching doctors and finally settled on one though I was so apprehensive and nervous about the appt. Of course the morning I was to go my flooding/period came on full force. The doctor was amazing and still wanted to do a pelvic exam. She spotted the large mass right away and sent me directly to the ER. I was there 15 hrs had 4 pelvic exams and flooded through each one. It was not a good day. They ended up doing a biopsy while I was there. I was beyond frightened during all of it. They basically said it was cancer and a large mass but needed to find out what kind. Since then it has been a roller coaster ride of scans and procedures of not knowing exactly what I was facing. I still have a PET SCAN on the Nov 26. This week we set up and prepare the radiation treatments. I get the tiny tattoos they use to make sure they get the exact areas to treat. I will get radiation 5 days a week for 5 weeks. Every Monday of those 5 weeks I will also get Chemo. The chemo increases/helps the radiation work better. There are 3 different nausea drugs taken on different schedules to really eliminate nausea. They say I may lose some hair but it will be minimal. My chemo drug is Cisplatin. They will also do some radiation internally but start doing it from the outside first. It will fry the ovaries so I will immediately go into menopause. I hope this sheds some light on symptoms and what made me finally go to the doctor. Any other questions I am glad and open to answering. But like I said please just find a Womens Clinic and check any and every concern you may have. Mine was cervical cancer your may not be. But a dedicated womens clinic will make sure you get a thorough examination. Take care ladies.

Wow, your kitchen looks beautiful! I love your stacked cabinets with the glass doors on top, as well as those gorgeous counters. Having the stone surround for the sink set into the walnut was a great idea. I can't wait to see more pictures. What are you doing for the backsplash?

cal_quail, I do hope you and yours feel better soon. It's so miserable to be sick and end up having to take care of someone else! I wanted to ask about something you've not mentioned. Permits. If they were not drawn, how are you going to handle that? All this work is rendered illegal in my state. If you ever sell, unpermitted work can nix a sale. When we had a house fire, the first thing they wanted to see were permits for everything. Given we'd just purchased 2 years before, and the house was built in 1976, all I could produce were the mouse-eaten, original blue prints. There was much back and forth about how much they'd cover until they determined the cause of the fire (which turned out to be crazy wrong, anyway). What do you think they'll do about that!? Edited to add: Winterizing. Well, I missed the opportunity to unhook all my hoses and timers. They froze and I think it blew a seal. Too cold to tell, and too cold to turn the water off in the garage. Gotta wait for this weekend when it warms to assess the damage. Still trying to start the generator. I jumped it, but it just won't turn over. Gotta get a friend to at least listen for me. As of this minute, my computer is making a horrendous noise. I'm thinking it's the fan, since the pressure of my wrists causes it to dull. This Dell Inspiron (my 3rd) 1555 has been a SERIOUS lemon. 3rd hard drive, 2nd battery, 4th memory module, and now this. AND, I'm sick to the teeth of Internet explorer. I dislike slapping tons of software on my computer that all do the same thing. I've lost yet another browser session, where I was actually working. Downloading Firefox, although I've never liked it very much. I'm having a not-so-great morning here. Grrrrrr. This post was edited by CEFreeman on Fri, Nov 21, 14 at 9:55