Thank you everyone! You've been very helpful. A couple of things I noted over the weekend, my front yard and slope gets much, much more sun than I had originally thought and it's really only the area right next to the trailer that's in a lot of shade. I went to the local greenhouse and checked out their shrubbery. I'm leaning towards laying down a lumber tarp (a friend of mine uses them instead of the landscape stuff and swears by them for keeping the weeds out) over the slope, planting about three juniper bushes and covering the rest of the tarp with a very light bark mulch. I figure it will take about 3 years for the juniper bushes to spread enough to hide the entire slope. At least, this is what I'm thinking of doing today. *L* Gah, so many ideas so little time! Chris - thanks for the number, I really appreciate that. I'll give it a call when I'm about to dig. crocosmia - great pictures, thank you! It's really helped to be able to see something that I'm trying to capture for my own garden. :) Lisa, I thought about the ivy, but like Karin was saying, I was worried about it being too invasive, plus I wasn't sure what it would look like in the winter. Vicki, thanks for the tips about the shrubs, although I have more sun than I originally thought, I'm still going to plant some shrubs for winter interest. I love those flowering shrubs!

One time I was off surfing the web when I stumbled upon a website. It was an exchange between people studying the climate in Afghanistan and Montana. So they said, climatic change effects mountainous places first. In 1987 we got hit with a drought for three years which they said was as bad as the Depression years. 100,000 people left the state. Our population was reduced to 900,000 and we lost one of our two congressional representatives. It has taken 20 years to rebuild that population though lots of people move here. They just don't stick it out. Most of these people come to the western third of the state.(green) Meanwhile, the eastern half of the state(brown) is emptying out due to pressure from drought and Canadian beef and wheat. There is one county which only has 600 people. In '87-89, we saw temperatures in the 70's in February, and began to get grasshopper storms. They ate everything in the yard and then began to eat the pine needles off the trees last. I remember in '88, opening the newspaper and reading there was a 30 acre fire in Yellowstone Park. It was late June. According to the new age philosphy, they said they were just gonna let it burn. By September the skies were completely black. Streetlights came on in the middle of the day and they closed the schools. We were all completely sick from smoke inhalation, and it took a couple of months to get well. It took another 12 years to get them to abandon the LIB policy, thought up by people back east with a comfortable 30 inches of precipitation per year. However, they still don't have the manpower or resources to do a good job of fire-fighting All we need are helicopters to stop most fires. After '88 the climate got progressively drier for 20 years, and I kept thinking about what my college history professor said. K. Ross Toole said the west got hit with a cyclical drought every 50 years which lasted 20 years. Really, though it seemed like climate change here began like a thin red line in 1980, the year Mount St. Helens erupted. Every winter got a little more drier. This year, though, the snowpack is at 7 feet in the mountains, the first normal snowpack in a long, long time. And it has been 20 years since the Yellowstone fires. If you think about it, why should global warming affect precipitation? After all, jungles are hot, and get all kinds of rain. When I was a kid, they said sunspots were causing abnormally cold winters. Awhile back, I read that sunspots occurring on the side of the sun which faces us causes the opposite. So sunspots need to be on the side which faces away from us to punch up Old Man winter. I haven't read whether that is occurring, though, and have no idea if that theory even holds water. It's snowing right now, just what the doctor ordered. and like most garden nuts, I JUST WANT IT TO GO AWAY.

Posted by thyme2dig NH 5 (My Page) on Sun, Nov 7, 10 at 20:00 So, 200 bulbs later I finally finished the bulb planting today. Got a few last-minute perennials planted too and the peonies cut back. And, I kicked the mice out of my little shed and got all the garden ornaments stored for winter. Thyme, how did you kick the mice out of your little shed? Critter-proofing my yard and house has been a challenge. I did have 2 mice in my house one winter, and I used one of those humane traps to catch them....then drove them down the road a few miles. So last week before it got cold, I put up chicken wire around the base of the house, with steel wool. Hope it works.

Lucky you!! I think PMs eat almost everything bad. At least that's what I've always heard...that when it comes to beneficial insects they're the pick of the litter. Tell them hi, and that if they have any cousins who need a nice garden to hang out in, I can set them up with a nice place. :)