Ms Lu, Forget about all the dos and don'ts for a moment. I'll tell you what I do (and I'm not necessarily normal in my approaches) with every landscape design on an existing home. It evolved from being a necessary step for drawing a plan and became (to me) the most essential step in planning a landscape. It is to clear my head of any detail of what I might do and simply go out to the home and start to do an existing conditions plan. I know that you live there and believe you already know those existing conditions, but there are different levels of familiarity. A humorous analogy would be going to first base, second base, . of intimacy with the property. We all know that the more we do anything, the more we understand it and pick up on detail and remember it (whatever "it" is). This is no different with your landscape. The four bases of an existing conditions plan are measuring and photographing, recording your measurements in a sketch or diagram as you measure, and drafting the plan which is a two step process of reading measurements (and looking at the photos for confirmation) and the physical act of drawing it (the home run "theres no place like home, theres no place like home" ). That is a lot of work, but you will know and understand your site like you never have before. It puts you at "ground zero". Now you can move forward logically. You will, hopefully, be a lot less concerned with concepts such as "perimeteritis" or "negative space" and be more focused on what challenges you have to overcome. Some of those should be newly discovered while some you already knew about. . And you will have a base plan to start sketching in your proposed work. Here again is a place where you can work backward or forward. You want a place to sun bathe and enjoy your coffee -these are "activities". You want some privacy and not to be bothered by road noise these are "experiences". Ultimately, you need actual dimensioned physical space, structures, plants, etc, where you can do these activities with the desired experience these are the "requirements". You seem to be thinking backwards by first defining the physical requirements for the experience before the physical requirement for the activity. Glenda the Good Witch said "it is best to start at the beginning and then follow the yellow brick road". I agree. Your list of activities should grow as you do your existing conditions plan (passive activities are also activities). Certainly, you will become aware of more aesthetic issues that will need to be mitigated or enhanced along with the primary ones. Parking, arriving, maintaining, entering, exiting, viewing, bringing in the groceries, playing with the dog, . are all activities, all will yield an experience, and all have physical requirements. Start by planning the primary activities. Place those that are movable where they least conflict with other activities and near supportive activities. If you need a patio, put it in the plan before you think about screening it (opposite of your current thinking that is starting with the screening). Enhance that space (it may begin to screen it). The design will evolve. Just dont make the secondary physical requirement (the screening) become the primary activity and then have to then figure out how your primary activity is going to work within it. Build your landscape around what is important both philosophically and physically. Perimeters and negative space evolve within that bigger context. Starting with a "mixed border" that is "10 out and 56 long" is the same as designing a planting bed and then trying to figure out what to plant within it. Put on the ruby slippers and click your heals together.

Mellen, The box from you arrived today. Wow! I was thinking it was like Christmas morning as I pulled one thing after another out of the box. The only bad part is that I am almost certain that I was here when the mail was delivered (probably around 1:30 or 2 p.m.) and the postal worker did not let me know. They usually beep the horn so you can walk out and get the box. Around 7:30 p.m. I said to my husband that maybe we should check the front porch in case the box came and there it was! My husband was a dear and helped me get the plants either in the ground of in pots for the night. You sent me so many plants that I love, I just hope they settle in okay. I put some water on them even though it was almost dark at that point. Anyway, I can't possibly list it all - Mary Ellen sent a beautiful Christmas ornament decorated with fancy lace that I will certainly keep from year to year. I also got a candle, memo pad, journal, angel plant poke and squirrel pot hanger (these two are so cute!) With the journal, I decided I will try to keep myself a little better organized with my plants and will write it what I received and who it came from. I completely lose track of that. Mary Ellen also was a true treasure as a friend because she had already prepared plant markers with the plants' names to stick alongside them. That is so good. I usually rush to put them in a pot or the ground and think I will remember and do a label later and I don't get around to it and forget the name. (I know no one else does that! LOL) Anyway, as for the plants, I got: Sweet Potato Vine 'Marguerita' (I have two sweet potato vines but didn't have this one), a Polka Weigela - it is a shrub - couldn't believe it when this came out of the box! - a cigar plant, a Sum and Substance Hosta that I have wanted for a few years now, a heuchera 'Chatterbox', two daylilies - Heron, and Custard Candy, and a flowering maple (also called Abutilon - I have a different variety that I bought at the Botanical Gardens plant sale this spring and it bloomed all summer and I love it so I am really happy to have another!) Does anyone grow these? I am wondering how to get more (root or save seeds)? I also wonder if they are winter hardy in our weather. Guess I will do a little research. Anyway, I know I did not list some of it. Thanks so much Mary Ellen. I know you weren't feeling well and I don't know how you put all this effort into the box that you sent. Thank you so much! Sandlapper

Honestly, I feel terribly sorry for that little girl. She is rude, mean spirited, irritating, manipulative, disrespectful, vindictive, selfish, and is going to have such a hard life ahead of her because of it. Shame on her parents. They don't care to discipline her or have any expectations from her & the older she gets, the worse she is. Either she is screaming for attention or she has serious mental issues and her parents aren't addressing it either way. How awful it must be to have to deal with it. My SD, so far, would not dare talk to me that way. Lately, she's been arguing, throwing up attitude & talking back to DH when I'm not around. She waits until I'm in my room & lets him have it. Shortly after they moved in 6 years ago, I heard her talking back to him & arguing. She was 8. I told her that I'm NEVER going to listen to her talk to her dad that way so she's better never talk like that to him in my presence. In six years, I've only had to say something to her once or twice, "who do you THINK you're talking to?" and she stops. I know she lays into him when I'm not home or when they're driving & if he wants to put up with it, fine. I don't need to in my house. I'm entitled to live in peace... not have my life ruled by a child's bad behavior. Next time she makes a comment about weight, I'd respond with "I'd rather be a nice/good/honest/etc. person. That's more important to ME than my weight." and leave it at that. Her goal is to get a rise & make you feel bad about yourself. Because she's a child, I feel very sorry for her being like this. But, I also know that just like my SD, they get older each year & understand what they are doing better. When they continue to do those things as they get older, the responsibility shifts from their parents who have taught them to behave that way.. to the young adult that should know (if not from their parents, certainly from peers) that what they are doing is not nice or that it's wrong, so it becomes their responsibility. Some people never figure it out... that they are in charge of their own life & what kind of person they choose to be... and it really is just plain sad. I feel for you to have to deal with this year after year.

Jen, I bet is has been a crazy week with extra furbabies underfoot. I hope it was a fun one. Nancy, Thanks for the photo of the rain. I've just about forgotten what rain looks like. We're hoping to get some on Sunday or Monday although the amount the 7-day QPF is forecasting for us keeps dropping, choking out hope of getting good rain with each update. Last night's/this morning's rain went both north and south of us (naturally) but we got a few drops.....8' rain....one raindrop every 8 feet. This so-called rain fell for a couple of hours (in theory, because we did have wind, thunder and lightning for the entire time) but the ground still looked dry when it was done, and the rain gauge had less than 1/100th of an inch in it...so we called it a "trace" of rain. It is probable rain fell from the clouds higher above but evaporated as it came through the drier air layer down near the ground because it looked like it was raining, but we literally were not feeling it or seeing it at the ground level. Virga. That's the story of our lives lately. That is so terrible about the ping pong ball sized hail. Hail that size can do a lot of damage. The worst hail I've been in personally myself was baseball to softball sized, and experiencing that once in a lifetime was one time too many. Larry, I'm sorry for all your troubles with the incompetent medical folks who have wasted three months of your time. I know that sort of thing is very frustrating. Jennifer, I am doing my best to hang in there, thinking that if only rain...real rain, not evaporating rain, not rain that falls 3 miles north or 1/2 mile south, but actual real rain that falls on our land and wets everything down....if only.....if only it will fall in the next few days, than maybe I can keep watering and keep the blooms going for the birds, bees, butterflies, etc. We're still hitting 100 every day (105 Thursday at our house, 103 yesterday, 101 today) and not getting the rain, so the garden just roasts and roasts in this heat and dryness. We were out at a fire again yesterday...a really bad one....a 6,000 s.f. barn with animals temporarily trapped by the flames. That big metal barn was like an oven and the firefighters suffered tremendously while fighting that fire. They are tough and never quit, but a person can only take so much heat. For the second day in a row, they already had a firefighter in the ambulance by the time we arrived on the scene with water, Gatorade and more....and we were not that slow to arrive either. The heat is just that bad. I had cooked fire food (still had some in the oven when the pagers went off) all morning long, and spent the whole afternoon at the fire, so never stepped foot in my garden yesterday. I finally went in there around 7:30 or 8:00 pm tonight just to water tomatoes in containers. That is all I could manage to do today. I couldn't go to today's fire (because, of course, there was one....but Tim went) because we have the 3 year old granddaughter this weekend. Instead of playing in the dirt, I've been playing with Play Dough and Softee Dough. I know you all are jealous. Megan, If every weather guy in the state stood on their head and swore that August would be more mild....I still wouldn't believe it. Not for us. Being this far south, we rarely get the cool-downs that hit points further north, so I don't expect much relief. We usually go anywhere from 2 to 5 degrees higher than forecast anyway, so even if they forecast cooler weather, we do not necessarily see it happen. Tomorrow is supposed to be our last 100+ degree day for a week or so, and I hope they are right. Even the low 90s would feel good compared to what we've been having. They just don't seem to do a very good job forecast our high temperatures down here. We also get a lot of compressional heating as fronts pass or are approaching or whatever, and inevitably the compressional heating pushes us to higher temperatures than what was forecast. I didn't even known what compressional heating was when we moved here, but I sure do know what it is now. Y'all know how much trouble I have with venomous snakes slithering out of the woods and into the garden to eat frogs and toads and whatever.....well, yesterday, at the fire, towards the end when the firefighters were doing overhaul, they brought out a charred crispy snake, burned and blackened so badly that you couldn't tell what sort of snake it had been, but it had the pointed head......so, I felt right at home with...the snake of the day. See there, I don't even have to step foot into the garden to see snakes. We ate lunch early today at Caddo Street BBQ in Ardmore, which is a really new place. I think it opened for business on July 4th. It was amazing---the food all tasted home-made, and I do mean home-made, not like the restaurant version of home-made but like true grandma-cooked-it-in-the-kitchen home-made. They're only open from 10:30 a.m. until approximately 2:30 p.m. (closing earlier if the meat sells out early, but staying open later if they still have meat available) and we were there early to guarantee we would get fed before the place turned into a standing-room-only situation. So, if you're in line ordering your food at 10:30 a.m., I guess it is brunch more than breakfast or lunch. I would gladly eat our first meal of the day there each Saturday for the rest of our lives. It all was so good, and Saturday seems to be the one day that Tim, Chris, Jana and I all can get together. We met the owner who seems like a fine person (and he sure knows how to smoke meat) and Chris won a free t-shirt for being the first customer in line this morning (which surprised and thrilled him---he will wear that shirt with pride). So, my weekend hasn't been about gardening at all, really, and I don't care. I need a break. Whether I want a break or not is a moot point---the daily fires (which I knew were coming at some point due to the drought) will ensure I pretty much stay out of the garden for a while, I guess. I do hope I can get back into some sort of gardening schedule on Monday and at least manage to harvest daily. I think that all that is really waiting to be harvested now is a few watermelons and some okra. Thankfully, I'm growing Stewart's Zeebest---and you can let it can really long and it doesn't get woody right away like some other okra varieties do. I'll try to start the weekly thread on time in the morning because the three year old usually sleeps in late and that should give me some computer time. I hope you all get whatever wonderful weather is in your forecast....rain, cooler temperatures....all of the above. Dawn