Good Morning, Thought I'd better get in here while I actually have the thread loaded and time to read it, before that opportunity escapes... Martie, so glad you checked in and are feeling good. Thought about you often yesterday. Listen to your own advice and take it easy. Eden, knew you would be great at your seminar! Congrats! Mary will be too. V, congrats on your unexpected bonus! I'm very happy for you! So, are you headed to Monaco as well as to see Kathy in Napa, CA for vaca this year? I'm with Martie, a greenhouse would be my first purchase (after the required hot water heater). Deanne, the detail on your birdies and the beaver moon shot are astounding! Very cool what talent and technology can accomplish. Kids loving all the pics. I'd have been extremely peeved at the license bureau too. Talk about wasting your time. Drema, you and Skip were hilarious in your cavepeople get-ups! Thanks for sharing that! Search atriplex hortensis rubra on Ebay and see if this is the plant you mean. One of my fav annuals, though it IS weedy, seeds about like perilla, but easy to hoe out extras. If you don't find it search completed listings, everything is ending tonight. Email me your snail mail addy & I'll send you some seed if this is the one you mean. Re Ebay, seems superior to Amazon for prices and shipping speed on the Invisible Garden book. I had it one week from ordering. Was a bit surprised at the lack of open response when I shared some great sources for bulbs. But want to thank the 5 lurkers who emailed me privately, and hope you got some great deals through those sellers and others. I was so pleased with my finds, especially the variegated Silverstreams, that I wanted to share with everyone, despite the time it took to upload photos. I had hoped others would chime in with sources they were happy with, but I guess it's late in the season. I was glad to hear some of the lurkers were still looking for bulbs, though I understand their reluctance to post in "idyll-land". Re hairy bathroom floors, I am thrilled with the Swivelsweeper I got a couple of weeks ago. It is rechargeable, weighs only 2 pounds, goes in any direction, gets the corners easily, and is fantastic at picking up hair! I have only two rooms with carpet, and sweeping the hardwood/laminate/vinyl in the rest of the house was a pain. My vac was too heavy to lug around and didn't pick up on floors that great anyway. (Plus Im leery of it attacking, lol!) This thing is perfect for bare floors, getting crumbs, hair, dead wasps, wood ashes, etc, easily. It works well on carpets too for quick pick-ups, though doesn't go as deep as my regular vac. I bought it for $39.00 and free shipping on Ebay, but the seller isn't registered any more. But there are other sellers with it, or check out swivelsweeper.com. My only caveats are that I used it before it was fully charged the first time so the battery has a memory for that and needs charging faster. I couldnt wait to try it! It really picks up the hair, but then it needs to be removed from the rotating brushes. They provide a little tool for this. And it needs emptying every few minutes in my house, but with 3 kids and 2 cats that's to be expected. Otherwise, I love it! (No, not affiliate in any way--again, just sharing information on a product I like.) Michelle, I really enjoyed your photo tour! Thank you for posting that. I love photo bucket with dial-up, as the thumbnails load easily and I can open one I want to see large in another window and let it load while Im looking at the others. Cant do that here, though its always worth the wait. Kenzie is a lucky young lady to have a grandma making her a private spot to garden in! Youll make lots of garden mentor memories for her as well. Where is Babs? It is not like her to miss Halloween. And Eileen? Honey? Norma? Saucy? Marian, we miss you! Brenda is probably busy, but I thought Janie was going to check in here? And Julie, would be nice to see a rara avis as well as Deannes birds. Yeona? Hope life is settling down with your DS. Barb? You havent checked in forever! Jerri, I saw Jerri on the book thread too! Wonder if Cynthia and Da even lurk any more. There are more MIA who are due to say helloand did I see GLDNO pop in here briefly? Why dont you join us! Hi Monique! T, I want (some would say need) that mirror! LOL! Sorry about your bad day, and hope you had good dark chocolate and/or merlot to recover. Your new beds are looking wonderful! Are you interested in growing from seed? I could send you someself-sowing annuals help fill in large spaces until the perennials and shrubs reach their proper size. Chelone, so where did you find your fruit? Looking forward to pics of the finished swags. Thinking of two different friends named Bruce today Been a crazy couple of weeks. Had blast with my family here the weekend before last. Great time, great meal, lots of fun. DS played piano and sang for us. DB had too much wine and attempted the same. Lots of blackmail material on the memory card I videotaped there, lol. Cousins had a blast playing together for two days. Worked on and sent in a sample flyer in MSPublisher for the marketing aspect of the job I interviewed for. Havent heard back yet, but he said end of the month so am still hopeful. Have found one job since (today) worth applying for and will fire off the resume soon. Been battling the bees/wasps and am pretty tired of it! We found the huge nest, under the roof of the sunroom where it joins the floor of the second level. DH has used 3 cans of that foam stuff you can spray from 6 feet away, and it is killing lots, but since the actual nest is under shingles, hasnt killed them all. We are getting 10-20 inside the house per day, through cracks in the floorboards as near as we can figure. I woke to one on my pillow yesterday, and nearly stepped on one when I got out of bed today. Didnt think Id ever be wishing for a killing frost to strike, but I am! But first, have to finish putting the shrinkwrap on all the older windows and the patio door off the family room, and weatherstripping the doors. Even with the fireplace as a secondary heat source, this is a lot of house to heat, and is old and drafty. I did the sunroom windows first. We are going to see if its feasible to keep it at 55F with the door to the house partially open. I hope so, as I have a bunch of houseplants in there, and with all the other windows soon to be shrinkwrapped, no windowsills left. Until we get the electric bills under control, fluorescents for houseplants is not an option. Hope to have it figured out by seedstarting time. Well it is a gorgeous, sunny day out there, and 60F already, up from 36F at 8:00am. Im going to plant some bulbs and sow some poppies over top, the Laurens Grape that Eileen gave me at IU3. Creating new invisible gardens is fun! Then its off to the library, grocery store, post office with Ebay packages. Sorry out of time for more comments, but hi to all Ive missed! Best, Taryn

tom123, I have had an equally large problem with voles...enough so that I have, for years, planted just about everything I grow in black plastic pots, then planting each pot to about 2/3 of their height. I have eight buddleias planted in this fashion including the one you see here. With buddleias, it will require at least a 15 gallon size, preferably even larger. I drill 1.5" holes about 4" up from the bottom to allow the plants anchor roots to escape into the ground. This method allows the anchor roots to perform their function so you don't get uprooted plants in the wind...a pot that is unburied will be blown over. The pot will allow the feeder-roots to remain pretty well protected. This has worked for me for many years on a wide variety of plants. It also slows,considerably, the leaching of nutrients that usually exists with potted plants. I have attached an early season photo of my perennials. These are PERMANENTLY planted in this fashion. Hope this helps! Bob

This thread is a wonderful illustration of why we shouldn't use common names for plants. So far I have figured out 3 different plants that are being called Moonflowers. I think some of you are looking for Datura seed. If so, eBay is an excellent source. There are seeds offered for many different species and cultivars of Datura. You may have to spend a few dollars for your first seeds. After that, you can harvest enough seed to supply all of your friends and relatives as well as keeping your own plants going. Datura is very easy to grow from seed. In warmer areas of the country, it will survive for a few years as a perennial. It will self sow in the garden or you can start the seed in pots and transplant your seedlings wherever you want them. I start some of my seed indoors in February or March because the plant starts blooming too late to suit me if it's left to it's own devices.

Donna, I don't even try to plant based on what moon it is. The Worm Moon would mean entirely different things to gardeners in Florida than it would mean to gardeners in Oklahoma or to gardeners in South Dakota. I've read books about planting by the moon (my favorite one was by Louise Riotte because she lived in Ardmore so her moons and their seasons were something I could relate to here in OK) and found that trying to match up the right phase of the moon with the right air temps and soil temps drove me right up the wall. I plant based on soil temperatures and air temperatures combined with the weather forecast because they govern what will or will not thrive or survive, and planting this way has worked for me since at least the 1970s so I do not feel inclined to change my ways at this point. I love reading about the moons---one I'm familiar with from growing up in Texas is the Comanche Moon, though I wouldn't plant by it! However, while reading the moon lore is fascinating, it isn't necessarily helpful in terms of gardening since plants grown when and how the weather allows regardless of what the moon is doing. I have been finding worms in my soil since the first week in January, and if I had looked during the last week of December, I probably would have found them there then. As warm as the weather has been, I'm surprised I haven't found worms lying on the patio furniture sunning themselves and working on their tans. Since we have had a warm and moist fall and winter in my part of the state, the earthworms are big, fat, happy and numerous. I love seeing them. My patio furniture took off for the garage last night where it is locked away snugly from the gusting winds, as are the wheelbarrows and anything else I thought might blow clear to Kansas today. When we were kids, we loved days like this because you sure could fly a kite (as long as you could hang on to it and your string didn't break) but I don't care for the high gusting winds so much any more. My wind chimes sound like they are having a fit out there. I should go out and bring them inside before they have a nervous breakdown. Dawn