Nell, The stones are to hold the mulch and some moisture. As I have said before, my soil is mostly sand and dries out too fast. That is why I must water every day. I dug down as deep as I could and then built it back up with peat and peat humus so that the azaleas would be above the ground level. I dug in some pine straw and then planted the azaleas. Then I added more pine straw and the rocks. The next day I bought some pine mulch and mulched around the plants and in between the pavers and underneath the Arborvitae on the west side of the pavers. This will help keep the soil moist and cool but allow drainage. The rocks will also help retain the moisture, but allow drainage and keep the pine mulch from washing down onto the pavers. I sure like the way it turned out. I am thrilled to have gotten these beauties for only $7! It must have been a weekend only sale, because the prices are now back up to $35. I really lucked out getting those special azaleas for that price! I'll go look at Paghat's Girard Pink. She always has such lovely stuff to drool over. Thanks for letting me know. ~Annie

I loved your pictures and your new house. It looks almost exactly like a house I rented in Calif. over 40 years ago. I loved that house it was magic. It was also haunted but thats another story. How fortunate you are that you can do what you want to it. We couldn't do anything of course and that was frustrating but thanks for your pictures. They really take me back.... McT

Hi all! Glad to see some people are thinking about what they're bringing and what they are looking for! Don't forget, this year I have a want/have list on google docs so it is available to everyone. See the link below. I don't think anyone's posted their stuff there yet (probably because most people still don't know what they'll have since the gardens are just getting started!) For those that haven't attended in the past - shoot me a message through gardenweb with your email address and I will send you an invite with all the details. Often times, gardenweb will block your email address, so be sure to include it or I won't have a way to send you an invite. As eclecticcottage says above, it's the first Sunday in June each year and always a great time! Plants of all sizes are welcome and we are a pretty laid back group. It really is a nice afternoon spent with gardening friends and new people are always welcome. Here is a link that might be useful: Want/Have list

Oh, yeah, anthropogenic climate change is definitely real. There's no doubt about it. Heat records are being broken far more often and by much wider margins than cold records, and we're seeing more and more record-breaking floods in already-rainy areas and record-breaking droughts in already-dry areas (which is to be expected because hotter air evaporates more water). Also, average temperatures in most of Tennessee have risen a few degrees in the past decade alone (1991-2020 vs. 1981-2010 NOAA climate data); average precipitation risen a few inches equally rapidly, too. I find it more likely that the destruction of wild palm populations was due to urban sprawl, irresponsible agriculture and rampant fire suppression. (Dwarf and saw palmettos actually thrive in fire-stricken pine savannas.) We've seen this with longleaf pines, too. The construction of reservoirs can't have helped, either; most subtropical North American palms actually thrive in poorly-draining soil, contrary to stereotypes about palms needing well-drained sandy soil. Besides, the wild dwarf palmettos in Cherokee County, AL and Hardin County, TN were seemingly unknown prior to the 21st century and are still little-known; if they could survive the severe volcanic winters in 1783-84 (which caused ice floes off of the Louisiana coast and a frozen Mississippi River in New Orleans) and 1816 (which caused deadly June and August frosts at least as far south as East Tennessee), surely the ones in the Deep South would've been unfazed by a volcanic winter in the Little Ice Age too! My guess as to what happened at Cape Hatteras is maybe a severe Category 5 hurricane snapped or washed away all of the cabbage palmettos (and the land they grew on); it's more hurricane-prone than anywhere other than Florida and parts of the Gulf Coast due to its extremely exposed location right by the Gulf Stream. With the Cuban royal palms in Central Florida, I'd guess that the Little Ice Age did them in (probably same for the Spanish moss in colonial-era Maryland), whereas other palm species were able to adapt to the centuries of a slightly cooler climate; some things are just down to chance. As for the Brazoria palmettos in Texas, I seriously doubt that those are cabbage palmettos. It's more likely that they're an ancient hybrid between dwarf and cabbage palmettos that migrated westwards. Maybe they could also be a more evolved subspecies of the dwarf palmetto than the Louisiana palmetto is. They're too cold-hardy to be pure cabbage palmettos, and them being a hybrid of the dwarf and Mexican palmettos has been ruled out. P.S.: There were no glaciers in Virginia in the Quaternary Ice Age as far as I know. The only Quaternary glaciations that I know of in the South were an alpine glacier on Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina and the southern edge of the Laurentide Ice Sheet covering modern-day Louisville, KY. Even the majority of Missouri, parts of Southern Illinois and most of West Virginia and the coastal mid-Atlantic escaped glaciation during every Quaternary glacial period; anywhere that was once covered in alpine glaciers would have cirques, while the LIS destroyed bedrock in old hills and left behind glacial till on top of whatever was left.