OMG, Stage Rat! You are sooo wrong! The camera may not lie, but the photographer may point that box whereever she chooses. Notice there isn't a 5 gallon bucket in the pictures? That because no matter where I point that camera, I have to stop and move another bucket out of the frame! LOL. Oh, and most of my seedlings were annuals which grow 5x faster than perennials -- that probably accounts for the disparity in the sizes of seedlings. However, you are also sooo right! Nothing would do last year but that I had to have Larkspur. I got some mixed colors in my very first trade, so instead of being happy, I realized I really needed electric blue Larkspur! LOL. (and I got it, later on, too!) AND you are also right about the over two feet thing, too. My beds look out of alignment because I don't have enough of the shorties. And I don't have enough of the shorties because I was so SICK of them! That's all you see at the garden centers, when you think about it. So, I went too far the other way. In fact, I think I was in a wishlist swap where I told people I didn't want anything shorter than 15" LOL! Luckily I had some petunias from swaps & trades and 100 miniature (bedding) Snapdragon seeds that ALL germinated from Nettasaura and Drippy. NEXT year I might get it right, but the reseeding sounds pretty good, too. I have little yellow birds perched on my Bachelor Buttons, isn't that funny? They perch on the stems and just eat-eat-eat -- all day long. Every once in a while you see the whole stems start to lean and that one flies off only to come back again and test its weight on the fallen stem. Now they have added the Liatrus, but I can't figure out why because they just started blooming and surely haven't had time to go to seed yet, even the first flowers. The chipmunks ate all the poppy seed, the squirrels won't let any of the sunflowers germinate and the Japanese Beetles have ruined every dahlia and coneflower. It's a veritable feast around here....guess I should have sown double what I did. ROTFLMAO because I would be dead if I had to plant even one more jug! I'm sorry to be missing your shindig this weekend but I will probably be going up to Chicago for a birthday party in Sept and could make a short stop for a cold one on the way up or back. I'll email you when I know the dates. Lime

Tomato David, Congrats on your new property! Sounds like you will have some very nice soil by next year. My wife is looking forward to having a big chunk of wildflowers all around the house. Being Japanese, she is not as into having a patch of green grass as I am (although I just want a little one). 'Pup, I was thinking about the weeds, and decided totake a number of different approaches. One is to thin by cutting most of them off at the base and leaving them to rot in place. A second is to pull and mulch the desirable plants near them. The third is to cut, carry, and compost them. I am not too worried about bare ground, the vetch and other plants are spreading like wildfire. Now I have found some serious bamboo coming out of a few roots that got left behind. They are all pencil thin whips this year, but I don't want them to get established where they are now. I have a space set aside for them at the bottom of the hill, surrounded by a 50cm ditch. On the other hand, I have harvested a lot of cucumbers already! It was fun, walking around, then seeing a beautiful straight eight cucumber hanging from a vine climbing a lambsquarter! I found a lot more after that. But you really have to look for them in all that jungle. Eric in Japan Here is a link that might be useful:

Allison, I love your laundry room! I wish I had a bigger laundry room but just having one across from my bedroom and not in a tiny little closet and not having to go to the laundry mat is one of the nice features that sold me on the townhouse I bought a little less than 11 years ago. Where are your hampers? I just love your taste of knowing where everything should be in a room to create rooms with both class and beauty. I just bought two white wicker hampers with two compartments at Fran's Wicker & Rattan Furniture Store and were amazed at the just about no smell. They have velcro cotton drawstring bags inside and are very well sealed. I aired them out for a week so they will have no smell at all. I am glad I went with such pretty hampers that were reasonably priced for the quality. Now I have to take the suggestions I got from others on making the rest of the room nice when I have time.

TG... I got three of those special hybrids from Carol this summer and the P.O. smashed the heck out of the box. I was sure they wouldn't recover, but they all bounced back and are ready to go in spring! I'm always impressed with the toughness of these plants!! Denise in Omaha