Since those long-ago days, our neighborhood has changed so much. The children have grown up and left to start their own families. Now their children go to school with kids of all races. As the former neighbors left, many of their homes were bought by people from Mexico and Central America. I know that there's so much controversy about illegal immigration, and perhaps some of our new neighbors are illegal, but all I know is that they are the best neighbors that we ever had. Many of them have fled the violence and grinding poverty in their homeland and appreciate their new lives. The elderly homes are getting facelifts. The roofers have been very busy and the sounds of sawing and hammering are heard coming from inside houses as we walk past them. There is homemade landscaping and flowers abound all summer. Loved stautettes and expensive urns are sometimes left out on front porches and are not stolen, as they might have been in the past. The parents are striving to learn English. The children are becoming assimilated in their schools and Americanization is slowly breaking out all over the place. The families are careful about their children; they've seen what gangs are capable of doing and keep the children as close to home as possible. These people are thoughtful about others. When we had five yards of mulch delivered to the foot of our driveway last summer and it needed to be moved to the back yard, suddenly wheelbarrows and shovels appeared and offers of help came from all around us. If we are winter slug-abeds, when it has snowed overnight, we find that our neighors have shoveled for us. Of course, all personalities and past experiences are represented in any population and we are not immune to the problems of urban life. Some folks play their music too loud. Some have a party to celebrate anything. Some honk their horns at six in the morning. Some bring their rural lack of skills to try to "do-it-yourself", oops! that old tree you are taking down, just brought down a telephone wire. The city seems to want to "write off" neighborhoods where an underclass lives, but who is the underclass. The family behind us, the man teaches in the city college system, the wife was an architect in Mexico, their son is attending our most esteemed state university and is studying international finance. The twins, (whose parents came from Jordon) down the block grew up become a mathematian and a nuclear physicist, their sister a pharmacist. The nurse across the street is getting her PhD, can we call her Dr. Nurse? The teenaged children next door are in gifted classes. Alex has started his own business and is thriving. Our country still has much to overcome. Among many things, we need more and better education, and to learn to respect each other. But our new neighbors see the America, with all its faults and opportunitities, that our ancestors did when they immigrated here.

Hello all, Thanks for a fabulous swap. I owe Matt a special dinner or three for loading the truck and staking out the spot! I am so excited about all my swaps, and the great scores from the Gambler's Circle. I am such a plant-a-holic! Even after the swap, a great visit with Sean & Bev - who gave me a bounty of plants, (I'm her backup / insurance garden) I was still sorely tempted to stop on the way home from Vienna at a roadside plant sale of fabulous blooming sweet williams... Matt saved me from that danger, but only just. I think I may need to get a fourth arbour to hold all the climbing vines from last year and this year :-) This is the first time I've smelled my vining honeysuckle from a trade a couple years ago, it's is the middle of the Friendship garden out front, and is usually tough to get to for all the tall plants. There aren't as many self seeded sunflowers this year, so I was able to tiptoe over there. My garden is so much richer and fuller for all the trades and happy memories of friends who have given them to me. Thanks again, like Ross I am already looking forward to next year's swap. But I am rather daunted at the task ahead of planting all my bounty! Thank goodness a large number of boring iris and black eyed susans are getting torn out this year, that'll make some easy room for newbies. Cheers, Heather / BlueIris3 Hope to see you all at Signet's picnic in daylily season.

I bought 2 trachys and the sabal palmetto from alabama. I bought the trachys hmm, I think 3 years ago maybe a lil longer. I got the palmetto a lil over a year ago. I am trying different protection methods to find the right one. I made a tee pee over the palmetto worked great but wind ripped weak points and cold damaged some of the leaves. I wont let that happen again.

Take a sniff of a cut leaf/stem. If it smells like garlic, its garlic chives. I use them to line beds, they fill in fast and thick--and during the heat of the summer send up tall stalks with white flowers on 'em that wave in the breeze. They stay evergreen too. In the spring, clean 'em up, pull the brown leaves out of the beds and you're done. You can use them like monkey grass but they get a bit taller. If you don't like 'em you can pull 'em out, unlike monkey grass that you never can get rid of. I like to snip some leaves and scramble them with eggs, or anything else I'm cooking.