Sun or shade? For shade or part shade, I'd consider partridgeberry, wild ginger or downy phlox. For sun, waldstenia (barren strawberry) or kinninkinnick.

Wandering jew coupled with oxalis (wood sorrel) if you are not worried about the wood sorel spreading. IT does like to spread. I found this pairing because I was inundated with wood sorrel. It would grow most of the winter and early spring when the wandering jew was bit back by the cold . Spring time was lucious with wood sorrel. Just about the time the oxalis got rust and died back to the ground, the wandering jew would be popping up from the ground nice and thick. Their colors looked good together too..

I absolutely agree with the part played by relentless new coverage, cameras and cell phones everywhere. It serves as a double sword to encourage a lot of sympathy but it also reveals real corruption making it seem as if a whole group is corrupt (or that a whole group is victimized for that matter). Sometimes it seems like certain people want their 15 minutes of fame nowadays since everyone is capable of becoming a star in the movie of life. I can't help but believe that many of these homegrown mass shooters are drawn by the idea of fame and the fact that the whole world will notice and hear them. I've seem some videos that look as if people are trying to bait the police into getting worked up and loosing it. Maybe I am seeing it wrong but I don't think so in all cases. Its like a kid will taunt a cop, act completely uncooperative and he's got that cell phone held up in the air, as if attempting to make a U-tube hit to play the poor victim in. We used to respect police when I was a kid and no one would have acted so rude or uncooperative like I see on these videos. I liked what that guy Dr. Piper wrote. I agree with the idea of self absorbed and narcissistic people who get their feelings hurt over any perceived challenge, whoever or whatever makes them feel bad is tagged with a name like 'bigot' or 'hater' with they themselves being the innocent victim. Many people seem to think freedom is equal to complete lack of restraint and that they live in a country where no one should not have any right to hold them to account for anything no matter what. This type of thing is completely out of hand. The laws are becoming more and more oppressive due to groups like M.A.D.D. (not to single them out, it just comes to mind) and 'The War on Drugs' that push the idea that more laws and penalties will solve these problems. Current events are always connected to the events preceding them. Problems like this need to be looked at as a progression of events from a historical perspective to make any sense. You can go back to the 1950's, 60's and 70's to mark the progression of events along with popularizing and accepting certain philosophical ideas. People now seem oblivious or uninterested in how these things connect and focus mainly on the results we have to live with because most people seem oblivious to history. Seems many only live in the present moment concerning any given crisis or personal experience as if history is irrelevant. The tendency is just get outraged or to come up with overly simplistic solutions like fixing 'the gun problem' or adding stiffer laws. Not that we need more guns mind you, I'm no NRA fan.

Horse herb is one of several plants that seem to struggle where I want them and thrive where I don't. It has spread through the local park in spots too shady for the Bermuda where it looks good even after the weekly cut. I had started letting it grow into and through our new sun beds this year as Sally Wasowski described doing in her north Texas yard, but found with a few hours of sun it can smother things that stay much less than a foot tall for any significant portion of the growing season. Somewhere in the following photo are a blue grama, gaura, and four-nerve daisy that need to be uncovered if still alive. This is one season of growth off of a well established mother plant that was about 3 ft beyond the frame. I like it, just haven't figured out how to live with it in the garden. It isn't reliably dense as a lawn alternative in heavy shade (with rabbits, anyway). Only place it has not been too aggressive or too sparse is with 1 or 2 hours of sun in an idle corner where we're eventually going to build a shed. Think I'm going to try to remove it everywhere else on the lot and apply a pre-emergent in the spring to keep its seeds from germinating under the cover of the larger plants.