Marian - the paper size is 11"x17" for the course but I gather in 'real life' it would be at least 24"x36" or bigger... Mary - I have noticed the ads for the English Gardening School in the RHS magazine. And there are the RHS courses too... I guess one advantage of the U of G courses is you can just take the courses that interest you and they can count towards a certificate/diploma or not, as you like. So there no feeling that you didn't complete a program if you want to stop after just one course. The Internet format was ideal for me; it's just that the course content wasn't quite what I was looking for. I'll have to look around at options and then see whether I'm still in the mood to do something more once the gardening season is over for this year. Saucy - The reference to the clematises is in the verbal description of the plan. You need the plant list key to find them on the drawing (and the drawing posted here is too small to read the numbers anyway! :-) GB - I was going to consult with you about what ones to use but ran out of time and just named ones I was familiar with! The transparent house was interesting. I had to 'build' it from scratch with only the floor plan outline, the height of the walls as provided by the teacher, and the fact that there was a 2' roof overhang! It's not quite right I think on the back part of the house but good enough for the purpose of the assignment. The whole isometric drawing thing is actually quite simple to do - if a bit fiddly and tedious! You follow a straightforward process using fairly crude shapes for the plants (drawn to scale based on mature height and spread) and, when you put it all together, it produces that rather astonishing drawing - with zippo artistic talent required on my part! Since it was all done at a scale of 1/8" = 1' small details were killers to work with. It took me two days to draw that table and tuteur! Rotating things 30 degrees when they're that small and have so many lines (all those chair legs etc.!) is hard on the eyes... And since the technique produces a 3-D effect, I kept losing track of what was bottom and what was top as the little image seemed to have a life of its own and 'morphed' a lot :-) And tilting everything at 30 degrees started to 'get' to me - when I was reading something after working on the drawings for a while, the text of what I was reading seemed to be on a slant! But it was mostly fun - and good mental exercise :-) But now it's time to mess around in the real garden! I do hope to get out and measure things next week and do a proper scale drawing of the front garden and the changes I want to make there. (I suspect I may end up just 'winging it' as usual if spring gets underway quickly sometime soon and I run out of planning time....:-)

This story is painfully familiar, so I will tell you mine and hopefully it can help you. Hindsight does help here. I went through the same thing with my now 19 DS. He was always an A student, very bright and scored very highly (98th%) on standardized tests. He was identified as gifted in second grade. Socially had some problems all the way through school. He was the "nerd" if you will, not the popular kid! Anyway, his junior year we started to see his grades take a severe tumble. At about the same time, I received a phone call from a teacher who was concerned because he hadn't turned in any assignments and the teacher had warned him. The end of the semester was approaching and rather than fail the teacher was willing to accept his assignments late and grade at 80% instead of the 100%. Better than nothing. I talked with DS to find out if anything or anyone was bothering him and he said no, but wasn't able to articulate why he wasn't able to follow through with handing in his homework. He took his semester exams and scored 96, 98, etc on all of them! He also received a 33 on his ACT exam yet was practically failing in school! Something didn't add up! There was such disparity between his everyday school work and his exam grades. Depression came to mind, but I was at a real loss as to what was going on. Nothing was changing even after speaking with him. I was so concerned and frightened. Ironically, my husband had received an invitation from his boss to attend a fundraising dinner for a private school in our area that educates and supports kids with dyslexia and ADD and ADHD. MY DH's boss gave a very moving speech that night about his own son and the struggles they had had. They had sent him to military school, and also had an intervention of sorts where counselor's actually came at 4:30 in the morning to take him away for treatment. The reality of all this was that their son was not 'bad' or 'acting out', but was instaed finally diagnosed by a neuropsychologist with ADHD. Not something that the parents had ever considered. I sat listening to this with tear's in my eyes because EVERYTHING sounded just like my DS! I started going to websites to learn more. In the back of the program from that fundraiser was the name of a psychologist that specialized in adolescents with ADHD and he was in my area. Until then, I had never considered it because my DS was not loud and hyper but rather passive and quiet. I made the appointment and after some diagnostic tests and talking, my son had the diagnosis of inattentive ADHD. And boy, did he fit the bill! Inattentive is a great word for him. The next step was finding a medication that worked for him and this took some time. Not always easy, but we spent the better part of a year trying to find something that worked. There are lots of categories out there! I tell you my story because just like the night I attended that fundraiser, I had never considered ADD either. In fact, most teachers don't either. They don't always have the time with so many kids to teach. Things DO jump out at me now about him. He is extremely forgetful, a big hallmark of inattentive ADD, thus forgetting assignments etc. I even told the Dr. that when DS was little we nicknamed him "The absent minded professor"! His reaction was "BINGO"! His senior year DS applied to 5 colleges. He was rejected from all but one! Today he is in his sophmore year at Case Western and we take it one semester at a time. So far so good! So, just like the night the angels led me to that dinner or our stars were aligned or whatever you want to think, I hope you will consider my story and start a conversation with your family doctor. You have nothing to lose! Good luck to you and your DD!

Excellent! The night lighting adds a beautiful touch! Great photos! Kt

That's really nice! I've noticed that with geese shots, you get odd groupings which doesn't make for good composition. Yours were cooperative, and you got good results there.