Are you still trading horseradish? I would love some. I have organic, sweet red peppers to trade. And I also have a red, orange, and yellow mini peppers. Growing some lemon tomatoes, eggplant, and beans as well--but no seeds available for those yet. Feel free to e-mail me here: mmo-rpg_kat@hotmail.com

I was on vacation, returned yesterday, happy to get so many responses to my post, and wonderful feedback. Coolplantsguy - yes, I do love peonies and heirloom plants for that matter, I just don't have the room though I admire them in my neighbors yard. The one we had toppled from the weight of the blooms, I don't know the variety, they were here when we purchased. Thanks for the suggestion, I will consider if I ever find the space again...my lawn gets smaller with each passing year. LOL. Pat, you make me chuckle. I'm like you. I spend so much time planning and thinking things through over the winter, only to find later that I don't like the combos or placement, so I plan again for next year. Some of my plant combos happened by accident & some I've followed suggestions when researching companion plants. I'm still learning how textures compliment eachother, and other things I didn't know to think about a few years back, but it's fun to learn. Summer is too short though. Prairiemoon, I also have Astilbe planted next to my Annabelle, and I enjoy the contrast of the red plumes and darker foliage with the brighter green backdrop of Annabelle. I've learned it's best to NOT fertilize it once it's established, it makes the blooms too heavy and they'll topple. Still, the rain does make them flop, but mine usually bounce back, I have one staked with a support, but it was just planted this year. I also cut my dianthus blooms back before I left for vacation, and returned to a new flush of blooms, the foliage tends to yellow on me though, I need to stop watering, I didn't realize they're drought tolerant. I forget the variety, it's got blue spiky foliage and red flowers. I will have to do more research on hellebores...we added a raised planting bed/retaining wall with a row of purple leaf sandcherries on top, and I'm looking for an underplanting in full sun; the sandcherries will be trimmed into a tree form once established. For now, I planted yellowish hostas at the base for contrast, but I know they won't do well in full sun. I'm glad to hear about Sedum Angelina, mine will be delivered some time this week, now I'm really looking forward to growing them, I just worry about our new dog, she's so rambunctious - she's a chihuahua boston terrier mix, the cutest thing, she likes to grab my plants and tug on them..I'll have to get her some more toys. I was thinking of amending my soil for the iris, adding more grit for drainage, we'll see if that works. I had one aster that bloomed for me, but it was spindly, a combo of dry soil in this area and minimal sun, but my campanula that I moved not too long ago is doing much better, must be the sun. I have to move the asters, just trying to find a location. It's funny about the Autumn Joy Sedum, my husband keeps telling me to pot them up since I can't find the 'right' place for them, I'll have to try that. I do like the blooms, very pretty, and they grow amazingly large after transplanting a single stalk, very impressive. I will try to post a pic of William Baffin rose when I have a chance..the pic is not mine as mine is only a few months new and I'm still learning how to prune them to shape, but my friend has one along their property and it's a stunner, grows upright almost like a tree canopy, and does well in our zone without protection and is disease resistant, with prolific blooms, but I know they have to trim it back regularly, it's a monster. Give me a couple of days and I'll try to post here if I can figure out photobucket. Of the climbers, I have Don Juan and Sombreuil. They died back almost to the ground, but new growth emerged in the spring, so they're still puny and it's the end of July, though I also transplanted them in early spring. We'll see next year if they do better. I purchased Smokebush 'Grace' and 'Golden Spirit' - I've read there's some potential winter die back, mine is only a month new, but I've also heard that they grow like weeds once established, so even with winter die back they'll grow like crazy. 'Golden Spirit' has new growth in a pretty lime green color and grows more upright in form whereas 'Grace' fans out. 'Grace' grows at a house up the street from us and it's just beautiful, especially with the smokey plumes. I ask my husband to slow down every time we drive by. :) Phyl in Chicagoland, I'm embarrassed to post pics. I still consider my landscaping in the beginning stages, most plants aren't mature or established yet, I've moved a lot around, still a work in progress. I had problems with photobucket last time I tried, but I'll see what I can do. I'll tell you though, do an internet search on 'Nancy J. Ondra', I came across her website when researching plants (that's where I got my iris and lemonbalm combo inspiration from) - her garden is to die for, absolutely STUNNING!!! I peruse her garden pics whenever I get the winter blues. Mxk, I was also looking at the Iris pallida but wasn't sure if it would look odd to mix these with the non variegated type. If you like the look of Jacobs Ladder, it reminds me of a shrub, Carol Mackie Daphne. Same variegated foliage, with pretty spring flowers. Connie, this is also my first year with wave petunias and I love them, I have them in hanging baskets. I've read they are self-cleaning, unlike the regular petunias, but I still deadhead here and there. I'd do them again, definitely. The foliage is also very pretty. Gabby, I used to throw tags away, but as the gardening world became more intriguing to me, I've learned to write down the names of my plants on a 'map' of my yard...LOL. Mostly in an attempt to overcome winter blahs, I also compiled a list of plants that need deadheading, cutting back, dividing, etc. so I know what to do come spring. Daylilyluvr, ok, like I said I'm an 'advanced' beginner in the gardening world, still in my learning curve. LOL. I had no idea Sweet William was a biennial. I've had it for two years now, the blooms are stunning, but this year it got all brown and ratty after blooms were spent, I chalked that up to too much watering. I cut it back and it looks like a few blooms are starting to come in again, but I had to remove old dried stems. Web says if you don't let it self seed it will shoot up more stems and act as a perennial...looks like that's what's happening for me as I likely cut back the spent blooms last year too. Crunchpa, my favorite person from the container gardening forum. LOL. I have a TON of containers this year, maybe too many. It takes me over an hour just to water everything, and that's just the containers, but I think I got overzealous and overstuffed them this time around...still, I wouldn't go without my containers, I'm hooked. I love that moss sedum, I'll have to try it. You always have the best pics. I still have dirt to cover until everything is established, I'm waiting patiently though my transplanting doesn't help either. I was looking into that red hot poker at one point, if I remember correctly I think it goes dormant mid season and then comes back again later?? Or am I thinking of something else? Pretty. I'll have to research more of the suggestions here, though I'll probably be losing more lawn in the process. :)

Rebecca, I understand about plants that do their own thing despite what we think that ought to be doing. I think every gardener has at least one type of plant that behaves bizarrely in their garden. I do think that morning glories and moonflowers just behave that way sometimes. I had trouble getting them to sprout in the soil here the first few years, though I have no idea why. Admittedly, it was awful red clay and we were in drought, so maybe the soil, even though I was amending it every year, just hadn't reached that right point yet. Now, and you just have to laugh, they reseed everywhere with wild abandon and have become a royal PITA because I want a few dozen morning glory plants to grow along the south and east garden fence of the front garden and enough sprout to cover every square inch of the garden in morning glories. They sprout irregularly too, so I am yanking out MG volunteers literally every single week of the garden season. I've never grown them in the back garden for fear they also would run amok back there, but this year some Grandpa Ott's popped up back there, perhaps planted by the birds, so now I am sure I'll be yanking out millions of them back there too. It baffles me that they were so hard to get started in the early years and now you cannot stop volunteers from sprouting and growing to save your life. And, in that same way that tells you plants have their own minds, we have had Milky Way and/or Blue Star morning glories pop up in a crack in the concrete near the garage for over a decade. They get no irrigation, no food, no care, no compost, no mulch and no relief from the hot summer sun beating down on them and the concrete---and they come back every year and grow like mad. I guarantee you if I had built a bed for them back there and tried to grow them on purpose, there probably wouldn't be a single one there. These are plants that know their own mind. Nancy, Hydrangeas do not do well at my end of the state---we are just too hot and too dry for much of the summer most years, but your soil and weather up there is very different from mine. There's a lot of plants that grow really well in eastern OK that don't grow well in other parts of the state, and I think hydrangeas are one of them. It isn't really the 95 degree days or 100 degree days that get them down here, but in those years where we have a lot of days over 105 in combination with little to no rainfall, you can just see the life leaving the hydrangeas even if you're doing your best to keep them well-watered. I started out with a lot of hostas our first year here, and the deer taught me they were deer chow, so we have none now. Daylilies do great here as long as they are within the fenced garden where the deer cannot reach them. Crinum lilies are an unstoppable force of nature down here and they don't care how hot and dry it gets. They bloom in the worst of the heat. Will they eventually wilt and die back to the ground if we are hot and dry for months on end? They will, but since their root clumps are the approximate size of a Smart Car, they surely do not die, and I've never had deer eat them either. The crinums will just sit there dormant and wait for better weather so they can green up again and regrow. I have had crinums in the same spot for over a decade and need to dig them up and divide them but don't even know if it is possible at this point---it might require the use of a backhoe or some other form of earth-moving equipment. Speaking of hungry deer and the lengths they'll go to in order to eat....a friend of ours a couple of miles north of us had to release two deer from the hog trap (these hog traps are not big enough for the deer, but try telling the deer that) the other day. I guess the bait in the hog trap was too attractive to the hungry deer, they crawled in and couldn't get out. That happened a lot in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, but hasn't happened since. I guess the fact it is happening again shows how much the autumn/winter drought has hurt their winter food supply. Kim, lol at the cartoon. Dawn

Last week was a bit hectic culminating in the remodel version of The Marx Brother's Night at The Opera as I had various workers coming in to do various stuff as well as a visit from the cable guy to move my modem and router from my bedroom where it had been originally placed when I moved back in October 2018 and still didn't have the room divider built which houses the television servicing the den/office and "living room" My room divider houses what I call my stripper pole television as the TV is mounted on a pole which turns so I can watch television from either my den/office or from the "living room". And of course the television in the bedroom was disconnected from cable and so he has to make another service call this morning. The electrician was here to hang the chandelier in the dining room as well as change switch plates to black and add some smart switches for my bedroom. Naturally when he got here, he didn't like the smart switches I ordered and convinced me that I should go with the Lutron Caseta hub so he'll be back. All this to have the digital equivalent of a "clapper" - if I'm in bed, I don't want to get OUT OF BED to turn off the sconces in the bedroom :-). Because my ceilings are concrete it isn't possible to move any lighting junctions in the ceiling and the one over the dining room table is not centered so it has to be swagged. Probably when my condo was built in 1965, swagging was considered the height of elegance but not so much anymore. My designer had recommended a sock and so I thought okay but when I saw what it actually looked like it seemed ridiculous to have what reminded me of Seinfeld's "poufy shirt" covering the chain. To my "non-designer" eyes the cure seemed worse than the cure so against the objections of both the electrician and designer, I had it removed. The chandelier is an old Art Nouveau chandelier that originally had small chains swagging from the bottom and over the course of time some of these had just fallen off. Amazingly what seems like a simple item to procure requires four months for the lighting people to get. But the chandelier is hung and presumably the decorative chains can be added when they come in without having to take down the chandelier. I had the carpenter who did all my cabinets and other wood stuff fabricate a medallion for my bedroom chandelier. My designer had found one which I loved but the company never responded - oddest thing since there is both a website and EBAY presence. At any rate, I am so glad I held out for this one as I absolutely am in LOVE with it. It's got an Art Deco feel and so even though the chandelier is Rococco Revival, it ties in with other design elements in my room since my sconces are vaguely Art Decoish and my wood furniture is my old Art Deco Waterfall furniture. Anyway long winded Saturday morning missive but if we can't share with all of you on this thread, who else can we LOL? I think the angle I shot at - I was in bed - doesn't do it justice This is the chandelier with the new medallion This is the sconce which is on either side of my bed This is the bed with the sconces - I still haven't finished in terms of the bed treatment. I got a faux mink bedspread which I should start using to finishing it off. This is a shot of the room divider which houses my television as viewed from my den/office. You can actually glimpse my chandelier over dining table to the left completely with tacky swagged chain :-)