Danlella. a girl after my own heart a great baker & decorator. it's too bad I can't take about half of it. to eat. I just gain weight just looking at it. is it red velvet. just kidding. I bet someone at your house is happy. great looking cake.HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to you my girl's just gave me cards. I have every plant you could imagine. so they couldn't give me plants Elizabeth

Courtney, When my son was your son's age, there was nothing he loved more than playing with the water hose, except maybe playing with the water hose, a pile of dirt, and the white dog, which ended up with the child and dog both dark brown and covered in mud! Fescue grass in a desert region? Well, I bet that was quite a challenge for everyone, wasn't it? When I lived in Texas, a lot of people tried to have fescue. It was nice-looking at certain times of the year, but July and August just ate its' lunch and it browned out. I don't know about you, but I will never buy land in an area that has a HOA. The gardener in me just couldn't tolerate being told that I couldn't have this plant or that plant or whatever. A few years ago in Texas there was a HUGE battle in one housing development over sunflowers. Sunflowers! The decision was made that sunflowers were 'unsightly' and you couldn't grow any sunflower in your back yard that got any taller than your 6' tall wooden privacy fence. If, by chance, your sunflowers got tall enough that they showed over the top of the fence, you had to remove them. I followed the battle in the newspapers for several weeks and couldn't believe it. We were sitting in a hospital emergency room with some friends of ours for hours and hours on Monday, so we discussed a little of everything during that time and HOAs was one topic of discussion. One friend was looking at new homes, and backed out of buying one when she saw all the HOA rules. Said she didn't want to have someone telling her you can do this and can't do that. I know HOAs help protect and maintain property values by keeping things from looking 'junky', but think they have gone overboard with a lot of their rules. Another of the people there with us is very involved with a large church in her community. Back when they built the church they were in the country, but are now surrounded by new housing developments with HOAs and have a hard time with EVERYTHING. They can't even put up a banner that says VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL. It is very frustrating for them. Isn't it amazing how much fun you can have on a decent-sized piece of land? After living on acreage in the country for so long now, I have forgotton what it is like to have a miniscule yard. I know that I am spoiled because I have endless amounts of room to grow things. When we lived in town, we were in a neighborhood that was about 40 or 45 years old, so everyone had HUGE trees and very shady yards. Shade is wonderful, of course, unless you would like to grow plants that like sunshine! Here we have enough space that I can grow shade-loving plants and sun-loving ones and everything in between. The only time I wish I had a smaller piece of land is when it is 105 degrees outside and I am out there mowing and sweating in the heat. Generally, though, I don't mind it. A small farm near us was sold a couple of years ago and the 120 acres were subdivided into 8 or 10 lots. Several new homes now occupy that acreage and another new one is going up right now. I don't mind having closer neighbors, but it does seem strange to have several families on land that used to just have one. We joke that it is 'getting crowded'. When we moved onto this piece of land, they were 10 or 12 homes on our road and on the intersecting road near us. Now there are 19. OK, it is not exactly a building boom, but we are losing a little of our rural flavor and isolation. Still, because of the way the homes are situated, we can only see one house from our property and it is directly across the road and about 300 yards from our house. We have WONDERFUL neighbors and I love them all, but we definitely have more of them than we used to! I love it here too. I never want to live any place else. Dawn

Happy Mothers Day to you all. Hope your plumie babies perform well for you this year. sue

I don't blame you for taking a lot of pictures. Your hostas are looking too good not to!!!! Your Brother Stefan is a standout---wait until its colors unfold---it will be drop dead gorgeous!!!