I basically agree with all that has been said above. Here are a couple other things to consider. First, in the Deep South where I live, parsley is strictly a winter herb. It gets too hot for it here in the summer. Oklahoma gets really hot too, right? So, that might explain the parsley death. Second, did you dig the soil underneath your bed? Tomatoes and Peppers like a nice deeply dug bed, and your raised bed doesn't look more than six inches deep. This fall, you might try double digging your little bed and then sowing red clover in it. (If you don't know how, just say so. A lot of us can tell you how.) Allow the clover to grow all winter and then just as it begins to bloom in the spring, go out and turn it under with your spade. Two weeks later, you'll be amazed at the difference in your soil, and the clover roots will have put lots of nitrogen into it too. (This technique is called cover cropping. It's inexpensive, organic, and very effective. Try it.) Don't despair! I had rather similar results my first year with raised beds and I had MANY years of gardening experience. It just takes time to build your soil. If you do the fundamentals, you'll see a big improvement next year, and the next, and the next. It's a good idea to get a soil test since you started with bagged stuff. Look in your yellow pages for your county agriculture extension office. In my state, a soil test is $6.00. You will get a computer report that tells you how much Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium, and more your soil has or needs. Why guess? In the meantime, it's a very good idea to go to your public library and check out a couple of basic books on vegetable gardening. Pay very close attention to the "boring" parts about soil preparation, compost, mulching, etc. There's no reason to learn everything the hard way! And if they have a book that is specific to Oklahoma, get that one! This is a big country and the differences in climate from one area to another can be crucial to your success. Here is a simple way to know when it's time to water. Stick your finger down into the soil to the middle knuckle. Then rub that finger together with your thumb. Feel moisture? Don't water. Check tomorrow. Feel dry or very nearly so? Time to water. Pay attention to how much time has passed since the last time and before long you'll get a good idea of how often you need to water. Oh, and if you have mushrooms growing in your soil, that's a pretty good sign that your moisture levels are high. But then, they may be only a little bit high and you just imported mushroom spores in with the straw. Keep an eye on things. Do the finger test. But don't panic.

Faerybutterflye, Please pay careful attention to Dorothy's words. Placing layers of cardboard and newspaper and mulch on top of bermuda grass will not eliminate it. In fact, as the newspaper and cardboard decompose (which occurs VERY quickly in a rainy spring), they will in fact turn into compost and FEED the bermuda grass which then will grow up through the cardboard, newspaper and mulch. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that it is exceptionally hard to build lasagna beds on top of bermuda sod in our climate especially if the bermuda roots are in hard, compacted clay-ey or rocky soil. In very hard clay soil, or soil dense with rocks, it is hard to get the bermuda roots out....I've been working on it for 11 years now with success only in limited areas. I've had much more luck with shading it out and will use George's thickly-planted corn method on new ground I'm breaking this year for a larger vegetable garden. If your soil is not too dense or rocky for a sod cutter, that's the best way to remove bermuda sod...rent a sod cutter, take it out and get it removed completely and totally from your property. If you leave a 1/4" piece of bermuda stolon every square yard, the bermuda grass will spread and take back your beds in a matter of weeks. I have heard Neil Sperry tell people that for many years (oops, decades!) now on his gardening show and folks just never seem to get it. Bermuda comes back and comes back and comes back. Years ago my brother thought he'd eliminate bermuda grass from his future flower beds around his new house. He rototiled, raked out the large pieces of bermuda, added manure to the soil, put down very thick and heavy black plastic (6 mm), cut holes, planted his shrubs and vines, and put a heavy layer of white rock on top of the black plastic. The grass sprouted in every hole where he'd planted and he had to dig it out by hand repeatedly. Five years later he declared the rocks and plastic a failure. He shoveled up all the rocks, lifted the black plastic and found very thick and sturdy bermuda stolons all over the place under that black plastic. He had to either dig it out by hand--very difficult in his thick caliche-clay/white limestone soil near Granbury,Texas, or let the bermuda reclaim the area. He gave up and let the bermuda win. So, my point is that if bermuda can survive for 5 years under heavy black plastic, you aren't going to smother it out with cardboard and paper and mulch. IF you get rid of every possible bit of the bermuda by digging it out or removing it with a sodcutter, you add organic matter to the soil, you plant, and then you put down cardboard and paper around the new plants and then add 3 or 4" of mulch, then you'll be able to mostly prevent the bermuda from infiltrating from grassy areas outside the bed and from stolon pieces you missed, but it will take constant vigilance. I'm not telling you all this to frighten you, but just to make you understand that we've been through this many times with many people. Lasagna gardening is great, and it works well with clumping grasses but not with running grasses like bermuda and St. Augustine grass in our climate. Every year, I watch people here in my county (LOL, and with some of them they do it year after year after year as if they seemingly learn NOTHING from their repeated experience) rototill up a nice big patch of bermuda grass, rake out the large pieces of grass and stolons, plant veggies and water it well. Four to six weeks later they have a garden full of young veggie plants with bermuda grass already reappearing "here and there". By the time their garden is 8 to 12 weeks old, there is more bermuda than veggies. By the time the garden is 4 months old both bermuda grass and Johnson grass have "taken it back", the would-be gardeners have abandoned it, and another unsuccessful veggie harvest of little to no veggies and lots of grass has ruint someone's hopes. I watch this happen year in and year out and don't understand why they fail to figure out that they have to get ALL the grass out first and then work to KEEP it out if they want to grow a garden. So, with your flower beds and veggie beds, get all the bermuda out first, then remain vigilant on a daily, or at least a weekly basis, to keep it out. That is the ONLY way to grow anything here in an area that formerly was bermuda grass. If you go away on vacation for a couple of weeks, you'll likely come back and find the bermuda is winning the war. There is nothing harder in southern OK than fighting the bermuda grass and winning. Since our main rainy months here are April, May and June, the mud and the rapid regrowth of grass stolons/runners make bermuda grass removal difficult during that time frame, and by the time the rainy season is over, the bermuda is stronger than ever. Last year's very heavy spring rains left many gardens here in Love County with grasses and weeds 6' tall by June. If you can't get into the garden to keep the stuff out, it wins. I weed and dig out grass every single day in the spring and still struggle to keep the bermuda grass and Johnson grass out of my veggie and flower gardens. Like George, I find it 'infiltrates' and spreads into places where I had removed it.....that usually happens when I am struggling just to keep up with the veggie harvest from mid-summer on because when the veggie are ready you have to harvest them, and then cook and eat what you can and spend the rest of your time dehydrating, canning, freezing, pickling and jellying the rest. That's when my bermuda grass starts marching back into the garden....it sneaks under the fence and starts spreading through the mulch when I'm spending all those long days in the kitchen putting food by for the non-gardening season. My best success with removing bermuda has been in areas where we have planted oodles and oodles of trees and shrubs. As they grow and get larger, they shade it out (hooray!) and then I can plant shade-loving ground covers and perennials. Unfortunately, trees grow slowly so after 11 years here, I'm just starting to see significant shading out of bermuda. I had black gumbo clay in Fort Worth and I only thought it was hard to garden in it. I've give my left arm to have that black gumbo now because the dense red Oklahoma clay I have now is 1,000 times worse. I miss my St. Augustine grass too. To prepare for your bermuda battles, buy one of those little garden kneeling pads in the spring when they show up in stores. I have three of them, all well-used. Buy a good strong sturdy trowel. With bermuda grass, you don't really pull it out....pulling it out only removes the uppermost part of it and the underground part regrows quickly. You have to dig it out, and be sure you put it into trash bags and dispose of it properly. NEVER put bermuda grass or Johnson grass on the compost pile because if you do, you won't have a compost pile but you will have a lovely new bermuda and Johnson grass garden. We're not trying to scare you....but George, Dorothy and I all have fought and fought and fought bermuda and Johnson grass and we know exactly how hard it is to win each battle with it. For your flower bed under the tree, spread everything you can on the ground under the tree.....those cedar needles, grass clippings, old hay or straw, fine bark mulch, compost, etc. It is even better if you can work those into the soil, but that is hard with compacted soil and tree roots. You can improve the soil from the surface down because the mulch feeds the soil and plants as it decomposes and the earthworms and other critters carry the decomposing matter down into the soil, but it takes years, not months or weeks. Since last year was your first year, I have to warn you that last year's weather was not typical....we tend to have many more dry drought-type years and not many wet, rainy years. For example, here in Love County, we had anout 53" of rain here at our house (including 12.84" of rain in one day in April) in 2009. That is NOT normal. In 2008, we had 23" of rain, which was below-average but much more typical of what we have here most years. I'm going to find and link the Carter County climate page from the Oklahoma Climatological Society for you below. Click on the link to read the data in it and you'll learn a lot about Carter County's climate, including average rainfall, snowfall, average last frost dates in spring, average first freeze dates in fall, etc. Remember, though, that they give 30-year averages and I have found in our 11 years here that we tend to have spring freezes far beyond the 'average' dates. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Carter County Climate Pages

" Red Oak is open grain and look's better if filled, White Oak is closed grain therefore doesn't require filling." -Wrong, completely 100% false. Both Red and White oak are OPEN grain woods. The grains on white oak are a bit more narrow, but still open. Maple is an example of a closed grain wood. If you take a close up pic of the floor, and post it, i can tell you if its red or white. I post over on the Floors forum all the time, post your question there and receive a lot more help. I personally dont like the varathane products, but thats for a different debate. For the Smoothest results, lightly abrade between EVERY coat. generally a 150 grit paper is fine, can even go 220. two coats in a day is fine. i would try 3 coats total (2 one day, then 1 more the next), and then see how you like the look. if it looks dry or you feel like another is necessary then go ahead. since you plan on staining the floor, do not keep adding coats after coats of stain. it can effect the adhession ability when you go to apply the coats of finish. If you want the stain to come out darker, you have two options, mix the stain with a darker stain, or you can Waterpop your floor. this will help get a more even color throughout the floor and take the stain a bit deeper. The wood filler i would do this, if you prefer to not trowel fill the entire floor during the sanding process, then after you get two coats of finish on the stain, then spot fill the areas you want and then lightly hand sand the fill off...doing this with finish applied will help prevent you from scuffing the stain off the bare wood causing a shading issue.

went to a color consultant today at our local preferred benjamin moore. basically came away saying beige. she liked the last one we arrived at as well with the new garage door and gray, said it works because it blends with the roof color well. she also mentioned that removing some of the front landscaping and the front tree might help the house from "disappearing" with all that gray. partner isn't onboard with the gray though.