I love reading gardening books! My three that I reach for at the end of winter to get me going are: The Cottage Garden by Christopher Lloyd (its like the Bible of garden books for me) English Cottage Gardening for American Gardeners by Margaret Hensel (Tasha Tudor wrote the foreword) Front Yard Gardens Growing more than Grass by Liz Primeau Many of the plants are out of my zone but I just look at the pictures, read and get inspired. The Tasha Tudor book is amazing so if you like that you will love these. I think the Christopher Lloyd and Liz Primeau book are in paperback, the other one is a little pricey . Happy Reading!

Kathi, yes, they're nicotiana. Last year I planted nicotiana Aztec, just one plantÂan impulse buy at the farmer's market. It reseeded this year. I don't know if Aztec is a hybrid, but this year's plants are the same white, at least. I was going to add a few more pictures, but I just put them in the Gallery, where I guess these should have gone in the first place. Sorry about that! But happy to meet everyone. Susan

Thanks, Lav. I read the whole thread, very nice. My escapades in the garden are not that interesting. Unless you count the time my rope hammock busted and I fell unceremoniously to the ground--which was padded by lush monkey grass, thankfully. Or the wintry day I was moving cement blocks in the rain. I had about 50 of them to move, to create a wall to hold back a terrace, so it was about 3 blocks tall. I was working hard, it was cold. But all of a sudden, I saw smoke. I turned my head and looked for something to be on fire. Did not see anything, so continued, saw the smoke again, and stopped dead still. Yeah, I was working so hard, I WAS SMOKING!!! My arm muscles were smoking, like a horse does in the winter time when it is exerting itself. So I was burning those calories that day!! Another day in the garden, I'd come home from working offshore after 3 months away, and was running the lawn mower in the tall grass down my the bayou. This was at my beloved little bayou cottage, MoccasinLanding. I took the clipping bag to dump out, and when it came out, guess what came out with it? TWO big fat sections of a snake! The diameter of the snake was like my wrist, both sections were, and there was no head and no tail. Needless to say, I stopped cutting grass that day. Likewise the day I was trimming bushes and left a pile until the next morning and went back to remove it to the front yard for trash pickup. I was using a heavy long handled garden rake, and when I picked up the entangled vines and branches, underneath the pile was this very unhappy SNAKE. I thought if I poked at it he'd run, but oh not so easy as that--he charged me--and I ran like a coward, into the house. I watched out the window to see what he'd do next, and he hung around for a little while, then slithered off into the patch of bamboo near the water. I am not really afraid of snakes, but I have a healthy respect for the damage they can make me do to myself. :)

You can make a DIY birdbath that can take the freezing temperature outside. I know a friend who made a 5-gallon bucket into a winter birdbath. He covered the surface with carpet why filling half of it with gravel. Then he installs a 60-watt lightbulb inside the bucket and sets a dish of water on top. The lightbulb will provide warmth which will prevent the water from freezing.