Although a lot of the plants mentioned come under the heading of groundcover (covers the ground), to me the definition of groundcover means plant it and let it go with no maintenance. Plants like geraniums, dianthus, bleeding heart, and other similar ones mentioned require some maintenance. After the first blooms of geraniums if the foliage is ratty, I cut it down to generate fresh growth. I think of that type of plant as "front of the border" or "edger". If I had a large swath of "groundcover" on a bank for example, I would not want the huge job of deadheading it, let alone, cutting it back. Full fledged "groundcover" should not require deadheading. Well, on 2nd thought, I do deadhead my ajuga, only because it is in a small well contained patch between the patio and garage door and is very visible. I have a hill covered with wintercreeper amongs trees and shrubs. It is pretty large. zero maintenance is the only realistic possibility (unless one can hire gardeners to do huge tasks!! LOL). I guess the type of groundcover to use is affected by the amount of ground it needs to cover. I thought of another "groundcover" that is actually a shrub. Russian Cypress. Microbiota decussata. A nice alternative to junipers, the classic groundcover, but unlike junipers, RC can take some shade. not green in winter... bronze/grey. I have a few scattered about and they add nice texture to mixed beds. Not really appropriate for exclusively perennial beds. I think they can get as wide as 8' or so. Mine are about 4' wide after 3 years.

soeur Will be interesting to see how these Persimmon tomatoes turn out, eh? Will keep an eye on Kimberly, Earl's Faux and Akers W. Virginia and let you know how they do for us. In the event that we do have the fusarium wilt in our soil, we started a new garden area some distance away from the possibly contaminated soil and have several dozen types of tomatoes there. Will still plant a few tomatoes in the same area as last year where we encountered so many problems, in the hopes that the problem is not fusarium or any other systemic soil diseases but merely the high heat and the fact that we may well have overwatered last year. johnski Would liked to have tried your methods but learned that the Green Guard is a genetically modified product. Thanks for the information. lumper20 Please feel free to share all you know about tomato growing. We have very good luck with heirloom green beans here and are planting in a different location this year after having success for the past 6 years in the same spot, which I think is pushing our luck. Ha...I still don't know how to successfully grow green peppers, but will try again with more pourous material in the soil. I started the seed too late, heck, some of the hot peppers required constant germination temperatures steady in the 80's. We can't keep our little hoop house that warm at night. Think I'll just buy some from the nursery, perhaps have a bit better luck. Perhaps you could start a new thread here on growing green peppers. Good growing to all, Pat

Sheesharee said: I'm trying to grasp putting the ornaments in the middle section. If you don't have enough to fill wouldn't it look like the color is just in the middle? I don't think I'm explaining this right. I don't think your trees look like there's vertical color in the middle. It's all well balanced. Back to Me: I will try to explain it better, sorry, so much easier to show someone in person LOL. OK, what I ment was you would put a large amount of the plain gold balls (in this case) in the internal part of the tree. You can place them sporadically inside the tree making sure though you start at the inside (where the trunk is) with the plain gold balls. Let me make this part more clear with what I deal with. Primary decorative ornaments I want to be able to see easily: Primary tree decorations. The pretty red decorative balls. The crystal drops. The glass icicles. The silk flowers,in this case red(this is something I choose to use) Secondary: The plain inexpensive gold balls. These are ment primarily for the inside "stuffing of the tree", BUT, some are used in a much smaller amount on the outside areas of the tree (parts you can see) for bringing in the gold ball as a SMALL ACCENT. So in answer to your question you would be treating your plain balls as a filler and tiny accent, NOT as the primary decoration. You would be using the PRIMAIRY balls on the outside, icicles, crystal drops, silk flowers. So that means you would buy 100 or so of the cheap balls for the inside and small outside accents. You would then be buying the PRIMARY balls, crystals, icicles in much larger amounts (I use at least a total of 300-500 of these primary items) Now my DD doesn't like as much as an over kill tree as me (although anyone coming to her home and seeing her tree is just in awe of it) So she uses the same items as I do basicly, but cuts the amount of ornament down to about HALF of what I do, and I think her tree is very beautiful. Now, I am just explaining how I decorate a tree, it doesn't mean that it is everyone elses taste. In the evolution of your tree you will come to the realization of what is best for you. My tree that I am doing this year was an evolving process, it took me quite a few years to get where I am, that is because since I am not wealthy, I have to do it a little bit at a time every year. I am happy to say, that I don't think I have to buy any more for the cream, crystal, and gold tree. Thank goodness! LOL Oh, yes, and as a bonus I can used the glass icicles and crystals with any color theme of tree, they fit right on in, so that saves me money too. This is an example of my cream color theme on some stacking plates. Does that make more sense?

Thanks for all your thoughts and input. Moni, the stretching solution is what I have been using on my towels that are headed for the garage for car washing. It helped some, but I don't think we should have to do that. I have some towels from the dollar store and and some from Walmart that are headed for the rag bag. Good enough towels in the beginning, but they didn't stay good enough for long. Still at 3 or 4 bucks you can replace them every year, so not such a bad deal. I looked in every posible place within 30 miles for towels without that decorative stripe plus checking all lables for where they were made. I did find a couple places had very pricey towels without that stripe, but they were always in a multicolor stripe or other pattern. I found none that were made in the U.S.A. Color selection was a problem for me also. The current trend is to earthy colors. I want pastels for my bathroom. DH's bath can use the earthy tones. liz_ga, I will have to try your solution about the Dawn or the white vinegar. I am going to throw all caution to the wind and wash and dry DH's towels on the regular cycles. I will use the vinegar and run them through twice before use. If something terrible happens to them, at least I can return the blue ones.