Lily I made a mistake about the thistles. I have two kinds, Canada Thistle and Purple thistle. The latter is the kind that grows 10 feet tall, has really thick stalks like pokeweed and puts out those big spikey purple "flowers." Canada is the lower spreading kind that over takes lawns. Both are very invasive though. Thanks Virginia, I hadn't heard of that one but will check it out. I've tried various weed gadgets and even torches, but thistle have obnoxiously deep roots and if you don't get it all it's a waste of time.... like pokeweed and docks. At my other place, which was brown clay, it was a little easier to dig weeds, but here I'm red clay on rock. Being in the foothills of the mountains gives me the rocky layers with a helping of that famous bright orange Carolina red clay on top. Hard as cement when dry, sticky as glue when wet. When the excavation team was here for some work, I was surprised at the boulders and rocks they unearthed. Very pretty though and the smaller ones, wagon to barrel sized, are in front of the house as my bed edges. Big bed edges...lol! The larger ones were used to shore up an old bridge on the lower part of the property. I have to cross a year around creek to get up my driveway and had a new bridge installed along with re-contouring the drive, but saved the old bridge for backup. I digress... the Canada thistle is mostly a nuisance for the moment. Hundreds in what would be the "yard" area and I mow them for now. The purple thistles are the ones I'm trying to keep from going to seed. They are dotted all over my acres, like you would see in an unkempt pasture. All those neat idealistic pictures of yellow finches sitting atop a huge purple thistle flower are pretty to look at, until you see the wickedness of the rest of the plant. I haven't mentioned my clay rock base much because I guess I don't really think about it. I've already learned how to make my own good soil with composting layers and have been doing my gardens that way for years. The concept of digging into typical ground and just plopping a plant in is a foreign concept to me. A pile of horse, goat, chicken, or alpaca manure is pure brown gold to me. Hmm... I'm not sure what that says about me.... Fancy new shoes and a designer handbag or a pile of compost?? Um, compost please!

While it is true that credit ceilings are based on income and opening new cards requires income verification, credit scores themselves have little or nothing to do with income. One thing to remember when closing cards is to try to always keep the oldest and keep it active by occasional use. My own credit score took a hit when I payed off my vehicle. I pay them off early. I was still in the very good/excellent numbers but still a 24 point hit just for paying off a loan. That's the account diversity part. But it is inching back up and now I am in a good time of closing or opening new credit again and not having hard inquiries affect me much if at all. Another thing to watch for is cards that "upgrade" you to rewards cards and such. Some do it automatically, others have an opt out feature. For example some stores will upgrade you to a store card to a combined use anywhere Retailer/Mastercard for rewards. Often these upgrades are reported as new accounts creating a hard inquiry on you record.

I ordered 5 kordes from this round of J&P sale. 2 in 2Q container, 3 in gallon pots. They are all looking great, except that Lavender Veranda has quite some yellow leaves, but still in good health overall. Can’t wait to see some blooms. Claire

Hi bosewichte, " The zinnia in your photo is absolutely gorgeous! What individual zinnias created that blend? " It was the progeny of similar breeder zinnias that had narrow tubular petals. Oddly, tubular petaled zinnias manage to appear in a variety of different flower forms. I originally believed that my original tubular zinnia was a mutation, but I have since come to believe that it was an example of an odd stable strain that lives under notice in fields of mixed color zinnias. That strain has red tubes as petals, and I actually saw one in the background of photo of a posted photo in another garden message. That person was apparently oblivious of that unusual zinnia. Many years ago a poster in a garden message (on the original Dave's Garden forum) showed an indistinct picture of a "trumpet petaled" zinnia mutation, and I encouraged the poster to save seeds from it and give me some. I never had a response from that and I don't think the poster even knew how to save seeds from a zinnia. But years later when I saw a "trumpet" petaled specimen in my garden I was super excited and gave it special attention and hand pollinated it and crossed it with many other specimens. And I was prepared for the tubular petals to be a recessive genetic factor, so I saved seeds from many non-tubular hybrids and was rewarded by reappearance of the tubular petals in a variety of colors and forms in subsequent generations. Apparently tubular zinnia petals are governed by a variety of genes, so they can appear in a variety of forms. My original "preferred" form was in "starburst" blooms, resembling fireworks. But since I have seen many variations of the tubular petals, some straight, and some very curved. And some end in elaborate petal ends. So there are a lot of different genes involved, which add a lot of variety to the zinnia flower form. Which make breeding my zinnias more fun. ZM