Hi Adam and everyone, Hmm. So it was not just me having little success with Minnow. Someone had problem with his Thalia earlier this year. I forgot where he got it from. Sun Disc/Sundisc didn't live long for me either. Just too crowded in my garden. Craigford is a mid season bloomer. Much earlier than Geranium. Looks almost like Geranium. Smells good too. re Leucojum. LOL. Amanda is right. Way too many leaves. Stay green longer than narcissi too. :-P But I love them. Planted only 25 the first year. Loved it so much I added 100 the next year. A mistake, because they multiply like rabbits. :-) I suggest that you plant no more than 25-30 and quite far apart, say 2' to give them room to increase. I like mine right in front of the border between Alchemilla mollis so I can admire its delicate beauty and Alchemilla can hide the Leucojum later in the season. Since it is white, it goes well with everything. I have clay soil. I learned that large size narcissi don't mind it one bit, but miniatures don't like it at all. I planted a couple hundred of N. bulbocodium on my lawn that had not really been cultivated hoping to get a drift of it. Didn't work. Only one bloomed then totally disappeared. Nell's reading suggestion is good. My soil is heavy clay. I have amended it over the years. In fact, I add leaves in the planting hole as I go. Here is what I actually do when I plant blulbs: Dig a deep hole, place a handfull of leaves and a pinch of bone meal at the bottom- a bit of soil-large bulb-a bit of soil & bone meal-a handful of leaves-a bit of soil with bone meal-minor or small bulb-soil-leaves-soil-another bulb-soil-leaves and a bit of soil. I call it composting in situ. LOL. My own invention. Works like charm. My garden beds is quite loamy now. Still rather heavy, though. I may plant 2 or 3 bulbs in one hole, depending on what I have. When I have mulch and/or compost I dump the whole thing on top of the beds whenever I clean them up.

Jay, I don't think that my garden plants are suffering from moisture stress as much as the surrounding landscape is since the garden soil has been improved pretty heavily. However the heat and constant wind have been stressing the plants quite a bit. The yard? It looks pitiful. The bermuda greened up to a certain extent and then started fading to brown. We haven't watered it at all. I think it probably is time to start running the soaker hoses around the foundation of the house in order to keep the cracks in the soil from getting too close to the house. Out in the pastures everything is pitiful. Our big project for this afternoon and tomorrow is to cut down every single bit of dry, standing vegetation we can on the three acres around the house, garage, yard and garden. At least that way, if grass fires threaten in our immediate neighborhood, at least the short grass on our place will slow it all down and give us a chance to protect our structures. With regards to early planting, hindsight always will be 20-20, and some years we make the right guess and some years we don't. You know how it is. Flip a coin, make your decision and pray the weather cooperates. I did plant early---and once I made the decision to do so, I went hog wild with the early planting. I kinda felt at that point that being so warm in March, while a delightful treat, also could be an omen of a blistering hot spring and summer to come. This time, planting early paid off, but in most recent years it wouldn't have. Because I planted so ridiculously early, the early corn is done, we've harvested a total of 14 gallons of bush snap beans, and tons and tons of zucchini and squash. The onion and potato crops in the Peter Rabbit Garden are huge, and it is an incredibly awesome tomato year so far. I feel like I'm having the late June/early July mega-harvest busy time now in late May, which is okay. I'd rather be harvesting and putting up food in these temps than in the ones we're likely to have in July. So, this time the early plantings are paying off for the most part. Next year I could do the same thing and lose everything to a late frost. However, based on this year's results, I'm more likely to plant early next year anyway just because I got away with it this year. And when I plant early next year? It probably all will freeze. I keep saying that gardening here should not be as hard as it has become in recent years. Susan, I'm seeing the same thing with my tomato plants in large containers. They seem root-bound and it is too early for that. I suspect the really warm weather in combination with early planting allowed them to make a lot of growth early and that the containers are filled with oodles of roots, meaning that watering twice a day is already required here at our house. Usually in May, with fairly steady rainfall, I don't have to water the containers very often, and certainly not twice a day. We will see a small drop in temperatures here, and also have some overnight low temps of 69 later in the week, but I'll believe it when I see it. I haven't fed my container plants since they were planted, and I probaly need to. They're pretty heavily loaded with toms so they probably could use a nutrient boost. Dawn

Cindy putting the tile on the wall makes sense...my dog is always pushing doors open with her face...wonder how tile on the door would look :-) I don't plan on having doggie doors...can't because I live in Florida and my breed of choice is the english bulldog. My dogs have all been sun bunnies and then can hardly breathe...I have to keep them inside almost all summer. I know we will always have dogs and always have our breed, it just makes sense to design with them in mind. For instance, we have decided on a one story, because the dogs are not great with steps, especially when they get older. The bedrooms will be carpeted so they have an easier time jumping onto the bed. I think we will go with some sort of textured tile throughout the rest of the house. We will never have a nice picture perfect house with nice white floors and pretty furniture thats always spotless. Our dogs drool and slobber...its inevitable that there will be spots on the floor and hair on the carpet and couches. But I would not have it any other way.

Stay calm! You have “buyer’s remorse” and it is not a death sentence! We have all had that new haircut that didn’t end up like the picture at the hairdresser’s and the the dress we bought and hated when we got home. But the haircut grew out and our “ someone special” told us the dress made us look younger and skinnier! Don’t do anything radical yet. Take a deep breath and stop for a few days (weeks, months?) before you rip out anything ( although I agree the “side splash” needs to go). It is heartbreaking to spend hard earned money and feel disappointment. It certainly doesn’t help when “pros” are rude and demeaning. And then, they come through with reasonable and elegant solutions to a problem. I certainly agree,from the vantage point of ownership of several houses, that it ripping out hardwoods is a bad idea-would you choose a cubic zirconia over a real diamond?