Paula - you may want to look into Flickr if you decide to take photos of a bunch of your seed parents. I finally coughed up the $24.95 (annual charge) for a pro account because it's just so much easier to organize my photos there than on my computer. Makes sharing individual photos or sets of them easier as well, and I have to admit I like being able to give and receive comments - and peek at gardens from around the world. Spartangardener - I was tossing around the idea of going directly to tires but am a bit concerned that some of the grass and weed seeds we have in the compost might compete with my winter sown seeds. In smaller containers I can use a good quality sterile weed-free seed starting mix. Depending on when we get the tires ready to go, I may go ahead and tire-WS a few "riot of sunflowers" tires or mixed planting tires using my most abundant seed. If all 56 of those nicotiana I planted out last week contribute to the seed program I can sow recklessly with the seed and if I lose a few while pulling out weeds it won't be a big loss. It would be nice to use the tires as big HOS germinators from December to May, then harvest their HOS and move most of them to colonize the really inhospitable garden areas. Then from May to September or so the tires could serve double duty as pretty gardens and nursery beds for perennials and seed-harvesting annuals - most of which were WS started in smaller containers. The prospect of growing large numbers of plants looks more doable than it used to thanks to things like winter sowing, tire gardens, HOS transplanting, and getting a stock of perennials going for future division. I'm thinking of something like this as my general plan: WS into pots in flats as the way to start seed packet seeds and other seeds that I don't yet have established. Tires as rich soil growing areas to be used as nursery beds to take perennials to dividing size and to grow annuals for seed. Current garden beds will get augmented with the vegetable container compost this fall, but they are still going to be tough environments for plants to grow in. They are a good place for plants that I have in such abundance that I can lose a few and it's not a big deal. Things like most of the zinnias, 4's, cerinthe, perennials that I'm starting to get a lot of - always with a couple safely held back in tire gardens to ensure next year's seed crop. Then there's the wilderness. The first spot is in front of the front rail fence and behind the front border shrubs. It's a nice big area with brutal growing conditions. Digging it would just give me another really awful garden bed, so I'm going to plant it with tough plants in HOS placed into holes with a bit of compost, and for the first year it's going to be a weed whacker garden. (That's one where you've got some islands of plants colonizing and you weed whack in between them - then dig more holes and plant more each year. I'm planning on hitting that area with hunks of hollyhocks, black eyed susans, cone flowers, corn flowers, blanket flowers, and probably a bunch of 4s. As we start to get to ridiculous numbers of plants here, the next spots to plant are the two steep slopes to the right and left of the front yard. These are wild brush covered slopes and the soil is so poor it's almost impossible to describe. When I have a good stock of bomb proof perennials we're either going to brush cut out sections or temporary fence it and let the goats eat it down to the ground. Then I load in plants and seed and hope for enough spring rain to let things get a foothold. I'm looking at starting 2000 - 6000 plants this winter and hoping that between the tires, current garden beds, and HOS colonization I'll have enough established perennials and annual seed to actually start getting something established on the slopes in Spring 2010. If we can get enough seed this year to direct sow the goatland area in Spring 2009, and if they don't eat every flower, I'll have a second potential seed harvest source there as well. And once I have banks of flowers established on the front rough border and the two slopes I can just take it easy, collect bags of seed to direct sow each year, and just WS to add fun stuff to the garden. I plan on doing a lot more sitting on the porch, drinking coffee and looking at the gardens after the first 5 years or so of work on them. As for hotbeds, no I hadn't heard of them but hubby has. We'll look into it further - sounds very useful. Well, the rain is going to miss us again. Maybe I still have a chance to get it to rain if I go out and start my watering. :) Lynda Oh! Hooray! Rain started while I was spell checking! Hooray!

So what happened? Did you acquiese? Did your husband go out and say, "It's not a good time. I'm sorry but you will have to go? We've already talked about this kind of ambush?" Did you ignore them and they went away without seeing any of you? Me, I would have replied to the first email: "I'm sorry I'm still recovering from your dreadful behavior at my child's christening. I'm not up for visiting for a while. Husband or I will let you know when we are ready to risk social encounters with you again." But that's just me. I have very little patience with unpleasantness. Co-dependent I'm not, rescuer I'm not, doormat I'm not, young and anxious to please I'm not. When MIL showed up at my door unannounced in the early morning, I would have first asked my husband, "Were you expecting your mother and a bunch of other people?" Just to make sure there wasn't a misunderstanding. And then I would have opened the door just wide enough to poke my head out, "Can I do something for you?" without a smile. She better have an emergency to report. If not, I would have said, "This isn't a good time. We've talked to you about doing things like this." And I would have looked at the other family members and added, "I'm sorry MIL dragged you over here. I don't know what she told you but we had no plans to entertain the family this morning; in fact, we have other plans, are not dressed and I need to get moving. I hope in spite of whatever MIL led you to believe was going to happen this morning, you have a nice day." And I would have shut the door, hoping MIL had the good grace to be embarassed. But if she wanted to play the victim card and get all wound up with indignation and self righteousness and involve herself in contacting everyone she knows to cry and complain, I would be able to shrug it off. Standing up for yourself against unreasonable behavior is how you separate the decent people in your life from the indecent. If you allow people to walk all over you, they will. But that's me. Some people don't care, they'd say, "Wow, great, want to tag along with us today." One way is not better than the other. The wrong way to handle the problem is to cope in a way that leaves you resentful and irritated and feeling trapped and angry. Fences make good neighbors. Boundaries make good relationships. Deeply insecure people hate personal boundaries, their goal is to merge into other people's lives like siamese twins. If you want to be a siamese twin, no problem. If you don't, don't feel guilty about sticking up for yourself. But also don't wait for the other person to be happy with your decision not to merge with them. Think of it this way: If your neighbor's dog keeps causing havoc in your yard, you can nag and moan and fuss over him putting up a fence and get yourself all wound up trying to get him to do what you want. Or you can put the fence up yourself and solve the problem. If he doesn't like it, it's his problem. If you are going to wait for your MIL to impose boundaries on herself or give you permission, you will wait for eternity. You can't turn a night owl into a morning lark, you can't turn an extrovert into an introvert, and you can't turn a person without internal boundaries into one who respects the personal space of others. They don't value the same things and are that way by nature. Neither of your ways are inferior to the other's; and you need to respect your own orientation on the matters of closeness versus autonomy as well as hers. What she wants does not trump what you want. And when it's your house and your time, what you want DOES trump what she wants. A therapist skilled in family dynamics would be a good investment, because if you don't learn healthy ways of negotiating the closeness versus autonomy problem now, resentments and anger are likely to build up to the point that you feel forced into that cut-off you say you don't want. You cannot ignore your own needs in any relationship and expect that relationship to survive. Good luck to you.

Hi, you asked in another thread about what I paid for my siding. I'm in Western Massachusetts, and the house is a simple (no dormers, etc.) straightforward cape. I think 12 square. $5200 - Mastic 44 carved wood double 4" plus outside corner posts with foam inserts (more rigid in a place I thought mattered most). Upgrade from basic corners and thinner vinyl was only about $300 of this cost. Aluminum coil stock. $50 per pair Mastic shutters installed. (Nice just wrong size!) $425 for Mastic door surround that had to be custom fitted $100 for two vinyl gable vents. $500 for PVC trim board and cove molding inc labor. Other costs like $1000 removal of old siding and $425 for installation of the front and storm door were things that someone handy like yourself could handle, unlike me with a 1 year old and 4 year old and husband-year old. :)

I agree -- this is not the time, for many reasons, to discuss your plans about children. I would just go ahead and carry the silly thing (I've never even heard of these) -- why not? Seems like a little thing to make her feel like she is part of the inner circle on her son's wedding day. If your only concern is that you'd feel you were being "two-faced about it," just forget it. You're not. It's just a hanky. You're not being two-faced, you're being gracious. Figure out a way to carry it so that it doesn't mess up the look you want; fortunately, it's not like jewelry or something that is supposed to show. You could even leave it in your pocketbook. Your problem isn't a hankie problem, it's a relationship problem. Pushy or not, she's your husband's mom, and she's going to be your mother-in-law, and believe me, it's worth it to try hard to build a good relationship, even when it isn't easy. Try to find SOMETHING about her you can appreciate, if not quite like, and learn to get along with her, for everyone's sake. No one wins family power contests -- everyone just suffers. If you live far away, it's easier! There is a Jewish saying that "a daughter-in-law is a little bit of a mother-in-law." Hearing that made me realize that we DILs can be just as hypercritical of MILs as they are accused of being of us, and I learned to be a better DIL. I've always been glad; I would have missed a lot. Now that I am getting close to MIL age myself, I'll try hard to remember how it felt to be the bride.