Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman is one of my favorite sources (my husband and I both owned copies when we met) but my favorite poems of all come from 'cyrano de begerac' by Edmond Rostand. for short quips, I tend towards using song lyrics rather than poems, one of the nicest manuscripts I ever did revolved around the lyrics to 'chinacat sunflower' by Jerry Garcia- they don't make much sense, but they were fun to arrange artistically. the Song of Solomon is also a great source for beautiful poetry (Matthew's not bad, either- and I think his viewpoint needs more attention than he gets) but the Koran also has some lovely passages. my latest was taken from a quote that Mercedes Lackey borrowed from someone else- that ends with the line 'you are responsible FOREVER for what you have tamed' I'm donating it to an art auction for the local SPCA in october.

Just a little trivia about 'Practical Magic'.......the house and garden is located on San Juan Island here in WA state but it is not on the water as the movie alluded to. It is actually inland a bit and a second 'dummy' house set was built for the waterfront scenes and then demolished after filming. And many of the town shots were filmed in Coupeville on Whidbey Island. My niece, who was a struggling actress at the time, was actually an extra in one of the scenes inside the shop. She has sinced moved on to other things :-) Since I am a garden designer by profession, most of my inspiration comes from the site -- each is unique and calls out what needs to be done and what should be planted. This of course with lots of input from the homeowners! And I visit gardens constantly, public and private, and notice specifically what plants they use and what works with what. I will say that cottage style gardens tend to be intensely personal and I don't get too many requests for that 'look' -- most of my clients want low maintenance, which cottage gardens are not!

Thanks for all the feedback and for sharing photos of such lovely homes! I've been looking at photos online (branching out from Houzz helped a lot, thanks for the push to do that!) and I think that given we are building in the woods in Minnesota, and that we casual people building a casual home, the Foursquare/Prairie style is a better fit for us than Georgian. I can be a little rigid in my thinking, but the people living in Minnesota during the Georgian era were Native Americans, and they weren't building Georgian homes, and so I'd feel silly trying to build an authentic Georgian home here. I know our house isn't square, but any of the styles would need some adjustment because we are limited to using vinyl siding (if we have an extra $10-15k, it's going towards a screened porch, not hardiplank or brick). My husband has been modeling his vision for how our house should look. I'm sharing it here with some trepidation-- its not traditional, and we're aware of that. I am the less visionary of the two of us, so it's taken me a while to come around to his ideas. The colors of the siding aren't right here-- a downside of the software he's using is that we can't adjust the hue. The green will be greyer than it appears. We haven't gotten an elevation yet from our architect. Renovator8-- why do you say the roof should be steeper? Our builder's standard roof is 5/12, so I know that pitch does ok with our local snow load, but I'm not sure what else factors in with roof design. I don't want to go a lot steeper because there's a development near us with lots of very steep hipped roofs and the houses are all roof (in that case it doesn't help that the development is in a narrow gully, so I always approach the homes from above). Houseofsticks- I posted our floorplan here: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/build/msg101210455016.html The blueprints are toward the end of the discussion. I've been trying to keep our elevation relatively simple because I feel like the more details we add, the more there is to mess up. If I had an extra million dollars, I'd love to build an authentic shingle style house with a tower, etc... but since I don't I'm trying to focus on keeping things simple and making sure that what we do build is done in a way that works.

My #1 inspiration site probably won't help you unless you live in the Southwest or SoCal; it's Phoenix Home & Garden magazine. I've had a subscription to it for many years now and never have a problem finding inspirational ideas there. My #2 inspiration site is this forum. I do wish, though, that more posters were from the Southwest so that I could get more usable ideas for my home. But . . . the posters here are such nice, fun, and sharing, so I would never consider not stopping by. Oh, and as for blogs, the only one I read on a daily basis is Eddie Ross' Lynn