Wow! That story is crazy! I'm really not sure what's going on here. I rent my house through a management company and I'm wondering if the homeowner is just wanting to let it go or what. It's kind of a long story but they've been procrastinating about renewing my lease so when it expired, I just kept paying the rent. Someone from the management company came by the other day, supposedly to renew the lease and she commented on "my flowers". I was proud of my little garden and showed her everything and told her what they all were. She was shocked...especially the cantaloupe and the pumpkin covered in flowers...she said they were beautiful and she never would have known what they were. She did kind of make a face when she asked me what was in the one rubbermaid and I told her it was corn. Then 2 days later, I got a notice in the mail saying I have 30 days to "clean up the property" or be evicted. It was all very odd. I'll admit that it was pretty tacky looking when it was just various sizes of pots and buckets and boxes full of dirt but now that everything's growing and blooming, it doesn't look much different than my neighbor's cactus garden or any of the other flower beds. I do have one crazy neighbor who likes to call code enforcement, CPS, and whoever else when someone ticks her off and I know she's mad at me so it wouldn't surprise me if she'd complained. The whole thing is just really weird but unfortunately, since my lease has expired and I'm just dealing with a landlord and not the law, my rights are somewhat limited. At this point, they could evict me with 30 days notice for no reason at all (I signed the new lease but they didn't) and if they can say that I'm not "keeping up" the property, it's that much better for them. I'm not really in a position to fight them either way, unfortunately. I'm not going to get rid of my garden, but I am trying to make sure it looks nice and the dying pumpkins were too much of a risk.

OK, y'all, this thread is so active I can hardy keep up, but I am going to try. Melissa, We are so glad you stumbled across this forum too. Containers are a great way to garden but they do require very careful attention to watering. Also, the soilless mix to fill them is expensive (often, when filling up my containers, I mix up my own soilless mix for far less than I'd spend buying a name brand soil-less mix/potting soil). The size/productivity of your plants is limited by the size of your container so for most things, the larger the container, the better. Also, during periods of hotter weather, containers may need to be watered daily and in the hottest 100-degree-plus weather, perhaps twice a day. The easiest way is to hook up a drip irrigation system and put it on a timer, especially if you are away from home a lot. Container gardening could be a whole thread in itself. I'll start a container gardening thread today or tomorrow and try to lay out some of the basics. Containers do not have to be fancy containers though....I use Tidy Cat litter buckets, which I have saved and used the whole decade-plus that we've lived here, and I spray paint them dark green using Fusion paint made especially for painting plastics. I also use Sunleaves grow bags. With clay soil, it takes years of constant amending to get it into really good shape. In the past I have only expanded my garden a little at a time....by adding an area maybe 40 to 60 feet long by 5 to 6 feet wide. Gumbo clay needs all the help it can get but it can be turned into great soil over a period of time. Our formerly red clay in the garden area is now a nice brown clayey loam because we've added organic matter to it for ten years, so I finally feel ready to start another garden spot....in three different places. However, they all will get fairly minimal improvement this winter (because I'm going to be working on 3 fairly large areas at once) and then every year I'll improve them more until they finally have pretty good soil. With clay the issue is that the particles of soil stick together and the prevents water from soaking in as well as it should, it also ensures that when the soil dries it is as hard and impenetrable as concrete so water just rolls off the surface and doesn't soak in, and it makes it hard for plant roots to grow. Technically, plant roots do not grow in soil. Rather, they grow in the air spaces between soil particles. Clay soil particles clump together so tightly that there are no air spaces for roots to grow in, and that's why we have to add tons of organic matter....to break up the particles of gumbo clay. The reason raised beds work so well with clay is that they put your plant roots in improved soil above the regular grade of the surrounding area. That allows water to drain down out of the beds to a certain extent. When 12.4 inches of rain fell here at our house in one day last year, I expected to lose my entire garden. You cannot expect ANY vegetable plant to survive that kind of flooding rainfall in clay soil. What did I lose? Only some onions and potatoes and a few corn plants that were not in a raised bed. Had I not had raised beds, I would have lost everything. George, We get more of the bermuda grass out by hand tools too, but in certain areas the ground is so clayey that we have to break it first with a tiller. When we do that, I rake out/remove by hand all the grass runners and stolons I can afterward, but it is hard to get a lot of it because it has been chopped into tiny pieces. Eventually, over several years time, I mostly win the bermuda war. Melissa, For hand tools, buy the absolute highest quality tools you can find and you'll never regret it. A high quality hand tool is a thing of beauty! Jay, I have bindweed in two places here and despite everything I do, it seems impossible to erradicate. Some years it isn't as bad, and this was one of those years....or maybe I am gradually winning the war. I hate bindweed as much as I hate bermuda grass and Johnson grass. Carol, I love containers and have found them to be lifesavers in very wet years like 2007. None of the plants I have in containers come close to approaching the size/productivity those same varieties achieve in the ground, but they do well enough to satisfy me. This year, there were several tomatoes that produced exceptionally well in feed tubs....including Chocolate Stripes, Momotaro and Scarlet Red. I wish I had 100 more feed tubs (I only have six). Y'all, I have to agree that no one looks the way I pictured them but.....I am going to stay on everybody's good side by saying that every person I met at the swap that I had not met before was younger, thinner and prettier than I had imagined. The one thing I already knew though was that every one one of them had a big heart of gold beating there in their chest and that was confirmed when I met them. Dawn

Stay away from any Ashley "sitting" furniture. While their styles look nice, they make junk and I guarantee you will be replacing it well before you thought you'd have to. Do research on "what to look for when buying a sofa" so you know what to check out when you shop, IE: cushion density, how it's built, upholstery (100% poly is my suggestion since I am NOT a fan of leather sofas at all). I agree to look on CL daily. You can find some great things there if you are persistent enough and have means to transport. Just be patient because just when you think you won't find "the piece", it will appear. Trust me, I've found some great furniture from CL including 2 high end, beautiful, matching sitting chairs that I absolutely love that were a steal....sitting in one as I write this. Just make sure any pieces you buy don't have hidden bed bugs so check well (and know where to check and what to look for).

I agree that espresso furniture is rather dated, and I can understand being tired of it. I'd suggest getting rid of the chest of drawers altogether and minimizing the amount of wood exposed. The bed itself isn't bad, is it making the room darker? If it's all white already, it sounds like you're already making it brighter. Perhaps a lighter colored area rug to lighten the floor as well. If you have nightstands that are dark too, maybe different ones in a contrasting color or shape would help.