A pile of manure that is around 3 years old is already compost. Spread it on thick. I spread fresh on my garden in the fall time, early winter if I am busy, and let it feed the worms all winter long. Straw if it is also 3 years old I am taking bets it is well on its way to compost also. Straw bales around here that have sat for a year pretty much fall apart and crumble nicely. Again spread it on. Maybe layer it with the manure, let it sit till planting time then enjoy. Sandy

Welcome to the forum, ibartoo. Yes, I have an Eleanor McCown that blooms mostly white-ish flowers with red or pink streaks. But some times I get a few full pink blooms. I placed a link below to a bad picture that I took last year. You can see the full pink blooms mostly on the lower right quadrant of the picture. I have not gotten blooms on E/M this year so I do not know what to expect. This is some times caused by DNA instability and by viruses at other times. Luis Here is a link that might be useful:

They are beautiful cats and beautiful butterflies. I went outside last night, you guys, and found MORE Black Swallowtail eggs, if you can believe it. I seem to be having a ton of them this year. Perhaps they are sticking around our area instead of moving up into Michigan, KEK? We are still getting tons of rain; are already over our annual estimated rainfall; we've broken the record this year for rainfall amounts and we're not even thru yet for the year yet! Temps have not yet gotten into the high 90s and 100s, which we're normally at for July and August. That, coupled with the rainfall, IMHO, has led to more butterflies hanging around in our region than ever before. I have about 50 BST eggs in a container and as soon as they hatch I will separate them so that there are only about 5-10 per container. I had to bring them in because the wasps are just thick in the yard and between them and the spiders, they were eating the eggs in ONE SINGLE day. I have not found any on the parsley, but have found the most eggs on fennel (green and bronze), a few on Rue and fewer yet on Zizia. They will eat almost anything, limited to these plants, though. Susan

I'm in the Atlanta metro area. I have lamium outside and it isn't evergreen but it does come back in the spring. I even have some in a container that has come back for several years.