Had you considered placing the asiatic lilies behind the hostas? Maybe use either 3, 5 or 7 bulbs/plants in a grouping. Probably the 7 might be too much. Do you have your date set on your camera? I've decided that is a good thing to have. One can keep track of time certain flowers usually bloom, or keep a record for another reason. You can always move stuff around later if you don't like it the first year. I like that red door a lot better than the white one! What about if you used the same color scheme in your flowerbeds as in your containers on the porch? Looks like you've got room for some nice porch sitting furniture and a small table in between the chairs.

I do the same thing using vintage medical enamelware irrigators. The irrigators are not always cheap but they are collectible and I have a thing for enamelware, comes from growing up on a farm I guess. There is a spout the used to hold surgical tubing but I simply fill the bottom of the container with packing peanuts and then pour the excess water out of the spout and rehang. I have eight plants hanging like this now and several more to go into empty irrigators I have waiting. Each irrigator is around 2 liters so they are good for most small to medium Hoyas. Here's to using all available surfaces to grow our Hoyas! Here is Hoya sp Sulawesi GPS 8863 which is most likley Hoya pallilmba. Hoya sp. Haruku Hoya sp Sulawesi GPS 7729 which is probably a form of Hoya brevialata. Mike

Been there, done that...lint is such a HUGE annoyance to my life. We're in a 2nd floor condo where the dryer vent ducting goes to the roof through the attic over 20 feet and several elbows. My husband bought the condo years before we met, and the ducting was clogged after several years. At the time, he decided to disconnect the vent from the duct. The resulting moisture did some damage to the cabinetry (swelling of the particle board, even under layers of oil-based paint). Soon after we married, he decided we needed to fix the problem correctly. He went up into the attic and disassembled the ducting, brought it outside, and blew it out with his air compressor. I pushed some cleaning tool through it as well. We can't be doing this regularly! I mean preferably, never again! So, I had him put a filter -- a gallon paint strainer -- over the dryer vent where it connects to the machine. This clogs every month or so, we pull the machine out, disconnect the vent, clean the strainer, and put it back. This is still an annoying chore, but not the nightmare of dealing with the whole duct run. My husband had a cool idea, that what we need to do is sew a new, longer strainer that tapers to a skinny point, so that even when it clogs at the point, there can still be air flowing past the clogged strainer, and we should be able to go longer between cleanings. We got a new dryer last summer, and pulled the ducting out of the attic to clean it -- but it was already clean as a whistle. So, our secondary filter system has kept the duct run clean for 9 years. I found you can buy secondary lint traps with a door that opens to clean them out, but we don't have room to install the box in our laundry room, and I don't think it would work any better or be easier to clean than our homemade filter. When I redo the floor, I plan to put magic slider thingies under the dryer feet to make it easier to move in and out, plus I won't want to gouge my new floor. I have researched other solutions. People claim that solid metal vent will maintain better airflow than pleated, but I think it will still clog because we need 2 90-degree elbows to get it connected to the duct in the wall. And if it clogs, how do we pull out the machine with a non-stretching vent? If we could move the duct in the wall to match the dryer vent outlet, that would eliminate 2 elbows and would probably help... I also found you can install a secondary fan in the ducting near the exit, increasing the airspeed in long ducts so the lint won't clog. They cost $150-200, but if I never had to clean out the duct run or pull out the dryer to clean my makeshift secondary lint trap ever again, it would be well worth it. I also think that our ducting is leaky somewhere, because rooms on the other side of the wall (our master bath) get crusted with lint all the time. Finding and sealing those leaks would probably improve airspeed some, plus save me tons of work cleaning the lint all the time. I think the additional fan is the way to go. In 2 other areas where we replaced an ineffective low-cfm cheap fan with a high-cfm good one, like the hood over our cooktop, it made an amazing difference, night and day. Here is a link that might be useful: example of dryer duct fan

Brings back memories of our Brutus and Ginger now since long gone. Brutus was an only dog for 3 years when Ginger was brought on the scene. He was obviously miffed at this intruder but never hurt her. He'd smack her with his paws (huge dog with paws as big as my hand) and she tumbled and come back for more. Funniest thing was the day he came into the family room with her hanging off his tail! Yep, she latched onto his tail and he just kept walking. If he could have talked, I swear he'd have said something like "Can you please do something with her". The one shot I really love (and can't post as I'm not sure where it is) is her laying down between his paws and looking up at him. It's one of those "My hero" type things. Sure do miss those two.