This thread is so good for the soul. I've been screaming with laughter at every single post... and almost lost it when emily06 said: > Hilarious! So.... in addition to many of the things above, I will stop telling hubby I'm going into the garden for 5 minutes. I will revisit the idea of meal times at the table I will remember to eat during my gardening days instead of feeling sick and dizzy outside and grabbing a not very filling apple off the tree. I will use the bathroom before I go out, instead of suddenly running into the house, getting into the bathroom, trying to wash dirt-covered hands while the maddening tap is running and I'm having to do a mad dance at the sink until my hands are clean enough to touch my clothes! I will try to wear gardening gloves. That may solve the above problem. I will sit in my garden from time to time and enjoy it without a critical eye. I will graciously accept Christmas presents like "Handbook of Weekend Gardening for All Ages" accompanied by a small dish of "Magic Bamboo for a Long Life" I will not yell at hubby and the kids for leaving coffee mugs and glasses around the house, because the garden is full of my tea cups placed under things and perched in weird places. I will not show hubby endless pics of every shrub and plant at every possible angle. Or at least, I'll try not to comment on the fact that he's sifting through the entire pile at a tremendous speed, saying, "Where are the people? We had guests here that day, didn't we?" I will stop intruding on the conversations of strangers in the garden centre. Even when a wife is telling her husband that she's going to buy that nice big tray of impatiens for that hot dry spot in the front yard. I will not plant my annuals too close together for that "full" look. I will accept compliments graciously instead of pointing out the huge mass of weeds next to the shed and the lack of edging and the lack of lawn care. I will stop pretending that the rabbits, squirrels, blue jays and cardinals are MY personal wildlife visitors and that they are on a first name basis with me. I will stop trying to avoid the neighbour who gave me 6 Canna Lilies one year, and told me to dig them up in the fall. They were gorgeous and I kept meaning to get them out of the ground but the whole process really didn't have much appeal. Then I felt quilty and always imagined that she was checking out my garden the following year looking for them. I will accept that some people love to put stark red and shocking white together in their flower beds. I will not make a "throw up" noise when we drive past those houses. I will not ask my brother-in-law if he wants to smell my heliotrope. My sister is STILL trying to convince him it was all above board.

Lago, yeah the Delaware Coast has a pretty favorable climate for windmills and such. They are not is wide spread because people just aren't aware of such thing as cold hardy palms and the availability is not as great as in VB. It's getting better. The early "palms pioneers" like the Royal Rose B&B shown above illustrate the great potential here. They have been my garden inspiration and I have windmills lining my Victorian wrap around porch. We are a high end zone 7b here according to the 2012 USDA map. Earlier revisions by AHS and Arbor Day placed the immediate coast as the northern most extreme of 8a. That latter point seems to really ruffle feathers for some reason. But those of us who live on the coast know that we're in a bit of a sweet spot. You hit a very interesting point about the geography of our coast (Delaware Bay to our north) mimicking VB coast (Chesapeake Bay to their north). They are a good half zone milder being 100 to 120 miles due south, but also closer to Gulf Stream which is deflected out to sea by the OBX of NC. We recognize we're not VB climate, but we're not far off either, which people find hard to believe. I agree with you that pot grown palmettos are a better long term survivor. They are hard to come by in most places in the areas. Never seen here. There are some very rare palmettos here. I did a thread in the fall (Sabal Palmettos in Delaware) you can look for. There is a hurricane cut palmetto near Bethany Beach that was planted by a friend if mine at his former garden center. It was growing slowly and had some setbacks. But he sold the center to a woman who is "palms clueless". She didn't protect it winter a year ago, but surprisingly it recovered nicely and was getting a decent green crown by November. Then she cooked it with lights wrapped in plastic this winter. We write it off. Shame. It would've been better off left alone. After this mild winter, it would've come through perfectly and had a great summer growth a head of it. Yesterday, my friend texted me that the palm is still alive! It has 8" of new green growth pushing out of the top. It just shows the resilience of the mighty sabal palmetto. Hurricane cut palmettos are a poor choice for marginal areas like here. But that one is an interesting experiment. A smaller, pot grown palmetto has been at a Fenwick Island (inches above the MD/DE line) for a few summers, is un protected other than seated infringe of a very short wall. It looks great and is example of why this type should be tried more often. Again, they are not available. I've read extensively about palmetto and most sites say they are an 8a tree, but hardy to 7b with good seating. I'm going to do a drive to Gary's nursery this week to pick up pot grown 7 gal. palmettos and a Birmingham. Besides the "Sabal Palmetto in Delaware" thread, I did "A palmy visit to Bethany Beach" a few weeks ago, you might find interesting. Bethany Beach seems to have an even sweeter microclimate because if the Inland Bays to their northwest, which may moderate cold winter winds.

I thought my place was small - we have total land area of 285 square metres - that includes our little 2 bed home - - here's a list of what I've got in that bit of dirt: She Who Must Be Obeyed and I are happy to try and grow anything we can get our hands on, though she is starting to wane in her enthusiasm: silly girl thinks we have too much planted already...LOL cyprus pines - x 2 - they provide privacy from two neighbours and have a love seat and fish pond underneath them. There's a black elephants ear in the fishpond along with some twisted bamboo and a couple of other plant gifts that I can't name. The pines have two baby stag horns, mini split leaf philodendron, a lime leaf philodendron and some old mans whiskers growing on them Boston ferns, king ferns, a couple of different coloured periwinkles, vietnamese mint, taro, cardamom, five spice plant, coleus, ivy, argaves, hoya, more black elephants ear, cycad and some mosquito breeders (bromeliads). There are a couple of "invaders" - again unknown - that provide some blue and purple flowers during the summer. They seem to like it there, so they stay. This is the boggiest part of the garden - we get a lot of run off from the neighbours and the upper part of the hill our street is on. Next to the bog we have a gardenia, snow bush, lemon grass, yesterday today and tomorrow and a little buddha garden - - A ceramic smiling buddah, some gypsophila, pansies, petunias, gailardia, a camelia behind and some wormwood. We have a little concrete patio with a pergola over the top - about 5mX2m - strawberries planted outside and nasturtiums, lemonbalm and apple mint growing where it can. There's a jasmine growing up some of the trellis. Inside the pergola we have three bird cages - - a pair of green peach faces without the peach colour, their mum and a new chick (dad was escaped by a cat) and a pair of bengal finches. Half a dozen hanging baskets with a mixture of ferns, tahitian bridal veil, a New Guinea flat tassel fern, zygocactus and variegated philidendron/spear leaf thingy; pots and pots of lilipili, cane palms, scarlet croton, cardboard cycad, small tree ferns, pony tail palm, birdsnest fern, calla lillies, cordyline, diffenbachia, an orchid and half a dozen others that were given by friends - they look good but I don't know what they are. At one end of the pergola is an eight month old clumping palm and at the other a 4 metre tall tree fern - probably cunninghamii - it has three or four orchids growing on the trunk and day lillies, asiatic lillies and a pink and white leafed thingy that pops up every year. The next structure is the grave - it was a large pile of compost that is now planted with rosemary, beans, silverbeet, soursop, gerberas, sweetsop, surinam cherry, petunias, african daisies, gotu kola and a beatiful little red climbing rose grows along the fence. Then comes the guinea pig hutch - it follows the side fence for about four metres and has beans growing along the outside - bit of tucker for the animals and strawberries surrounding the first of the lady finger bananas. There's five bananas in total, four of them flowering/fruiting, the first hand is ripe now. In and around the bananas are strawberries a small purpley/red coloured bush that was an indoor plant but which thrives since it was taken out of the pot and given the option to live or die. There's a couple of sorghum plants growing to give the birds a bit of variety. Between the grave/bananas and pergola is a small bit of earth with these growing: In pots - bok choi, choy sum, pak choy, silverbeet, english spinach and anenomes. and hollyhock seedlings. In the ground - a mock orange, midyim berry, jabacotiba, silver beet, california asters, nicotinia, day lillies, chocolate pudding fruit, pansies, some flower seedlings that I forgot to learn the name of, horseradish and a calemondin (star fruit) . Behind the calemondin are some more gerberas, licorice basil and oregano. In behind the bananas - between them and the guineapig hutch is another bad piece of soil - sand on top of clay - that's where the cane toad trap is and where the cat trap will go. Theres also my experiment with theobroma cacao - the plant used to make chocolate. There's more silver beet, some sweet potato, some scotch bonnet chilli, a small native daisy - that has yellow or red or white flowers and is starting to sprad like a ground cover, a lychee, a dizzygothica that was also given the option of grow or die after surviving my pathetic attempts at keeping plants indoors, a candy striped hippeastrum, a custard apple (methinks) that grew from a seedling, another red climbing rose, a cutting of a plant that She Who Must Be Obeyed found on a walk and which is now growing quite well in the back corner, more sweet potato and pumpkin, the worm farm and the compost heap. This brings us to the other plant that was there before we started planting - the 10 metre tall fish tail palm. About half a dozen canes a foot across play host to a very large stag horn, a couple of philidendrons and a couple of monsterias, a dozen or so bromeliads, more old mas whiskers and something that SWMBO insists is a native orchid - about half a dozen different colours and they are thriving there - so who am I to argue. Another unnamed varigated little shrub with pretty white flowers and more strawberries. In front of the palm is a mulberry seedling - it was sprouted in March or April 2004 and is now 5-6 metres tall. Then come two roses - Angel Face (named after She Who Must Be Obeyed) and our prized Blue Moon. Some more california asters, strawberries, day lillies, crinum, hippeastrum, tansy, blue boy, a wisteria which I have the job of trying to make into a standard, goji berry, a rather permanent capsicum - it fruits so it stays, a camelai - again no name, some gerberas in pots, a cumquat seedling, a mangosteen seedling,beans, jap pumpkin, a potted philidendron - large palmate leaves, nother gift - blue and white flowers with a miniature orange fruit, more hippies a naked lady, mondo grass, as a bit of a border, some basil, marguerite daisies, some green and white thingies that I forgot to keep the name tag from, a little purple puffball of a flower - again the name escapes me, a sub-tropical nectarine and some snowdrops coming up - they've apparently naturalised to this sub-tropical environment. In amongst all of that are strawberries (did I mention them before??), some more periwikles - escaped seeds - dozens of orange and yellow cosmos (whichthe pale faced rosellas love) an orange -washington navel I think, a seedling each of sweet and soursop, moon flowers where-ever they can find something to grow up, more agaves, strawberries, lemon eureka??, another type of custard apple seedling or a longan - I must remember to use and keep name tags. A globe grape seedling growing up one of the stumps from some more cyprus pines that we got rid of. A red grapefruit - again a seedling, an ice cream bean tree, some walking lillies, surinam cherries, mango- another seedling, and in the far back corner - a Norfolk Pine - we got a pot with three of them in it a couple of years back, two were given away and SWMBO couldn't bear jsut dumping number three - so she was planted in the back corner and given the opportunity to live or die - it was nearly two metres tall and had less than two litres of root ball when the other two were cut out of the pot. There.s a lot of baby red egg plant, chives, parsley, another crinum, a kaffir lime, a cassabanana, a pineaple - which the guineapigs discovered when they escaped and is now struggling to get any growth on it at all, some yarrow, tansy and wormwood, mint - half a dozen varieties surviving, a feijoa, tomatoes,ceylon spinach, paw paw,fennel, basil, kangaroo paw,pansies, dill, curry plant, frangipani, lemon myrtle,day lillies, more chillis, more strawberries, more mondo grass, nasturtiums, coriline australia, basil, another grape - pinot moir, naturalised fressias, 2 X prince of orange,passionfruit,. Along the southside of the house - with no sun - grows a camelia, gardenia, coleus, croton, golden cane palm, ponytail palm, blueboy, nodding violets, jade plant. Out the front is an olive, more ceylon spinach, nasturtiums, hippie seedlings, loquat. longan, frangipani, bush lemon, passionfruit, cosmos, a couple of types of self seeded marigolds, spinach and I think that's about it. Frightening isn't it. The whole block - including our little home is about 285 square metres. Maybe I should go and see a doctor??

Yes, I have the site open so that I can watch all day! That first one is a hungry one, isn't he?