Wow, I love your house, so rustic and gorgeous!! The floorboards look great! I loved looking at the birdhouses too so thanks for starting this post. I picked up a cute little angel birdhouse yesterday, it's at the top of my steps leading to the front door and it says "Every birdie welcome" Not sure if you're into pretty shabby chic or mosaics but I made a couple of them. I also have a collection of birdhouses in my kitchen that I use to buy from a lady that painted them and sold them at our local market. I'll post a pic of them all for you. Sorry about the sizes. I kept resizing them on photobucket but they seem to be still be big when I paste the html tag. Please ignore cob webs in my kitchen lol, obviously I've been doing way too much mosaicing and no cleaning lol.

Thank you, thank you for the "beautiful home" comments. When it was new eight years ago, I was enthused about keeping it clean and orderly. That mindset went by the wayside with the advent of gardening. Now the new decor has revitalized my domestic instincts. I hope it lasts, but I'm really getting less gardening done. I have planting to do now and I've wasted the cooler weather being inside. Oh, well, such is life. Cath, one could argue that I was doing the wrong thing by seemingly buying every blue & white fabric in sight, but in the end it turned out well. The original pillow covers were a very odd abstract design, very not me, so it worked out well with some work on my part. And DH loves it, too. He asked me to make a cover for the recliner to preclude stains even though it is stain-protected. Do you believe he picked a blue & white toile from the stash! Campanula is right. They are larkspur. Delphiniums don't work here - too hot, I guess. The larkspurs reseed and start coming back every January. I'm starting to pull them out now. They have lived their life beautifully. I don't know if the heat is doing them in or they are just this short-lived and are running their natural course. They make a spectacular splash in the garden during the time when stuff is frozen back and roses aren't ready yet. Freezes don't bother them. Without them the late winter/early spring would be so barren. I love that they come back on their own. I'm not disciplined enough to be doing seeds in August for planting in Sept/Oct to make a winter season garden. Did it once and don't think I'll ever do it again. That's all hot-time here and doing the tedious work of distributing tiny seeds in tiny pots while sweating on the screened porch is not my idea of fun. I suppose I could do it in the evening. I'll have to think about that. They'll have to be reseeders though. More research. So, Suzy, I think we have the apparel language straight at least for now. I would dearly love to visit the UK and France but it is highly unlikely since I don't buy lottery tickets. But if I do, I will be up to speed on the language. And thank you for the "Sherry's famous larkspur" comment. It made me smile. Sherry Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

Thanks for the info regarding the convention. I will keep that in mind. I was wondering about sources on plants that I'd probably not seen before, so being able to find them at the convention explains a lot. I'm not worried about the work with conifers as I had already determined that they were very much less labor intensive than my perennials and shrubs - dramatically less! I won't be giving up my perennials anytime soon, but I feel this strange "force" pulling me...and if pics of the arboretum do this, just imagine seeing it in person! With my newfound knowledge that everyone has shared about conifers never stopping growing, etc., I'm a little disappointed on one hand with the stuff I planted last year. Not my windbreak (I'll die before it fills in), but other places where I didn't do just trees. I figured so carefully last year, thinking I was calculating to fullest space needed - until death do we part sort of thing. Now, it seems I may have calculated out only 10 years at best - at least on my hillsides. (I was hoping to plant them and water and forget it and never dig up or worry about overgrown plants again).I'm trying not to be disappointed because that's a long time off and why worry now and what's done is done! Worst case, I move or trim at a future date. However, I do have a very large flag pole area 50 x 50 that I started last year with the thought to add to over the next 3 years and I am pleased to 1)know I can move things around still, 2) there's plenty elbow room, and 3) glad that I will have the opportunity to learn more and avoid a "boring" ending to the project. I made the decision last year to keep it in conifers with the exception of the cannas around the base of the pole, and now that I've discovered all my friends at Gardenweb, I'm so happy about the decision. All in all, I'm pleased and will enjoy the next 10 years and not worry. It's too bad I didn't look beyond local providers for more variety on what I'ved already done, but I'm sure I can always find some room to add a new plant! Are any of you readers just done with buying plants, or is this an ongoing obsession that never ends? Coming from a background of southern gardening mothers/aunts, who incoporated a lot of flowering shrubs into their flower gardens, I tried to do the same when we moved up to a zone 5. I "accidentally" got into "this" by using evergreens in place of some of my flowering shrubs when I saw that I wasn't going to be able to duplicate many plantings that I was accustomed to. I must say that I had my first attraction to all this conifer business when I discovered that Japanese gardening used a lot of conifers and other evergreens to produce a soothing and calming effect. Anyway, I digress. Seems that conifers has it's whole own brand of nice people for the most part, too, and that's very nice! OK Battle Star Galactica usurps everything else and I must cut this off. Sorry for the long post. Snow must do that to me.

SunnyC, you should start a new obsession thread every month. I enjoy reading everyone elses "preoccupation"lol! obsession Compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety. A compulsive, often unreasonable idea or emotion. You asked for a pic of my finished stenciled wall. I did this project at work, not at home. I wanted something a bit over the top in scale. The scroll is almost 3' high though I wish I could have found one about 5'. The walls are 24' so it would have been kinda cool if I brought them up even higher. Didn't want to stencil from an extension ladder though. A broken bone is not in my plans for the future! Anyway, here is a pic. Product has been hastily thrown back in place, so just look at the wall please:) For perspective, the pink is painted to a height of 9'. The stenciling goes around the corner about another 20'. So that project has now led me to the next phase of my obsession which is painting this harlequin pattern on an opposite wall. I'm thinking just a shot of it. Three rows wide and going up about 12'. I found a company that offers diamond shaped stencils in a 4' x 2' size. I could achieve the Harlequin pattern with painters tape, a level and a tape measurer, but that's giving me a headache thinking about it....