I am glad I provided some humor for you. Just this morning, we unloaded about 5 ton of granite boulders and placed them on our "mountain." Now that the handcart is beefed up, it makes moving these boulders a lot easier than you would think. We had to build a trail (that we were going to build anyway, btw) ahead of time just in order to be able to move the boulders into place. We also had to put boulders into place just to keep the 50 or so Knockout roses from floating down the mountain. Those pumps are scary looking. I am guessing that each one of those babies is going to use $50 a month in electricity. 9000 gph and they can push the water 60 feet vertically. I blew the rear end out of the Ford F-150 the last go around driving 300 miles to get concrete pond molds. Each waterfall will have a series of drops with 3 small ponds. We will be building them inside the garage this winter. With all of the excavation and ponds and mountains and gigantic boulders, our formerly "huge" place is getting to feel smaller and smaller. We will eventually stop when we run out of room. I have been eyeing the vacant lot across the street and wondering if the county would let me "connect" my property to it with some sort of wooden pedestrian bridge across the street.

ACK!! I'd be p*ssed about the hydrangea. Oakleafs aren't quick growers like other types of hydrangea, so while eventually she'll fill in and the shape will even itself out, it might take a couple seasons. Similar thing happened to me a couple falls ago - a gust of wind sent my wheelbarrow flying into a winterberry holly, cracked off a huge piece of one side. Thankfully the damage wasn't that noticeable after the foliage filled in the following spring (although, of course, *I* knew it was lopsided and it bugged me...), and now you'd never even know it, I swear it's fuller than ever - that's the effect pruning can have, whether said pruning is intentional or not. Perhaps next season you should move the grill out of the path of the wind, or chain the legs to something that isn't going anywhere.

Well, I didn't realize I already had Cherry Valentine from RR and ordered it again from Marietta because the picture in the RR catalog looked nothing like the picture from Marietta. As I have seen others post pictures of their Cherry Valentine blooms, I can see that Marietta has it correct. Anyway, the ones from Marietta are sending up bloom scapes while the ones from RR, like the other Daylilies I got from them, are struggeling along just to make green leaves. I sure hope they are able to at least grow roots and get something going from the root system later in the year. I know I am being impatient but after seeing the quality of plants I got from Marietta vs RR and the way the Marietta Daylilies took off right away, I want everthing to grow quickly.

You were two weeks away from listing the house for sale. You weren't planning to remodel then, so don't do it now. Just fix what's broke and move on.