Thanks for starting this thread, Ingrid. In fact I was thinking not only of resource-thrifty plants and gardening techniques, but also of attitude adjustment. I agree with your ideas. When I started gardening here I had an idea that water was going to be the critical item, and with our dry summers and diminishing rainfall that's true, though we also have our flood-landslide years. Scrounging up organic matter also turns out to be quite a chore. I think it's scarcer here than in the U.S., and our clay is very poor in organic matter, though once adequately supplemented it takes care of itself. People who garden in Florida sand, for example, may need to amend forever--do you? I'm asking--while, if I can ever get ground well enough amended that the plants there grow vigorously, the litter and prunings from those same plants provide all the organic amendment that ground needs. Unfortunately there's not much of the garden where this happy state of affair reigns, but it's true for the escarpment in front of the house, the bed beside the house with the big climbing roses, much of the woods, and a few other places. My goal is to get the garden feeding itself. Generally I'm friends with annual grass in the beds: it grows, dies, and provide a layer of organic matter above AND below the ground, with its dead roots that I don't have to dig in. I want all the ground covered with plants busily generating organic matter. Nonetheless I anticipate that we're going to be buying bales of old hay for years to come. Digging big planting holes and heavily amending the the soil we return to them has shown itself to be a necessity. We water plants the first year after they're planted, and little or none after that. We have one hose for the big garden and water by hand. Plants grow VERY SLOWLY here. This is part of the attitude adjustment I mentioned. However, if I dug them a good hole to start and the plants are tolerably adapted to their conditions, they hang on through all kinds of adverse conditions, not keeling over when the summer drought hits. They develop good root systems, I believe. We have deep clay they can dig themselves down into, the ground is moisture retentive, and we have 40" of average annual rainfall. All this makes dry gardening feasible. (N.b. I believe there are plants that grow in thin soil in dry climates: not everything requires clay and good annual rainfall.) More attitude adjustment: I accept that my roses aren't going to bloom to speak of in summer, nor will much else. By the end of summer the sunny garden in fact looks like a bomb hit it. Total devastation. I stay indoors and forget the garden, rather like northern gardeners in winter, or I stay under the wisteria pergola, where I have my sansevierias and other potted plants to admire. Last summer we got busy clearing a strip of woodland of ivy and brush, and the shade down there was very enjoyable. Just a pleasant spot to be in is worth having, whether or not anything is in bloom. And good foliage and interesting plant form can be present and enjoyable even in a drought. I love the seasonal aspect of the garden, looking forward to cyclamen and the persimmon in fall, admiring dormant buds and sarcococca flowers in winter, getting thrilled by the first sweet violets at the end of February. As always, I have more to say, but I ran out of steam. Coming up: trees. I want to hear others' thoughts. Melissa

Great stuff! I read all but the one by/of (?) the funny Australian woman. I'd read the Dogs in the Carcass story before, but it's funny enough to bring tears to my eyes the second time around. It's got to be made up - you find the things that just don't pan out when you read it closely - but who cares? The squirrel story is great. The gardenia post is hilarious. Wish I'd read it BEFORE killing several gardenias in my cool, foggy California coast garden. Did anybody besides me notice that ALL the responders who grew gardenias easily were in hot, humid climates? Gardenia plants shouldn't even be sold in other climates, but as long as people will buy them, they will be for sale. I wonder if there's a similar post about Daphne odora anywhere. That's another famously suicidal plant. I couldn't prevent two out of three of those from committing suicide (also in California), with the one surviving plant deliriously happy, and absolutely thriving. Same location, same treatment for all three, all three the same variety. It's enough to drive a gardener nuts. I haven't tried those here, and don't intend to. Plants have to be very tough to survive here. Just the idea of planting a daphne or gardenia here is enough to make me snicker. Thanks for the laughs! Jeanne

Should be a word of caution to anyone contemplating upgrading to Vista. Check, check, check, to make sure that all your software, games, are Vista compatible and, if you have a laptop/notebook, make sure that drivers for your model are available for Vista before upgrading. I belong to a few computer help forums and you wojld be suprised at the number of people who do upgrades but dont check. The next thing you know, they are posting all their woes of not being able to find this driver or that and this or that wont work. Research is the key.

I learned about that years ago, I lost $40. on a game I bought for myself and my sister. My information never matched what they had on their records. They helped me once, then it happened again I just wrote it off as a learning experience. I buy all my games retail, none online. That is why it irritates me that they still can plant cookies when I don't even visit their site. Iwin games are terrible about forcing you to use their game manager and go on line when you play. I emailed them and was told how to avoid the game manager and the connection. I still got their cookies so I put the url address in privacy/exceptions/block. No more cookies. Doesn't work for alawar.