I want to enjoy my garden at night too but: My neighbor's porch light, which is on 24/7/365, shines right in my eyes when I'm on my back porch. Neighborhood cats are out prowling and fighting and screaming at each other, and making my dogs bark, and then someone complains about my dogs barking. A neighbor is pacing up and down the street in front of my house, talking on his cell phone. Not quietly either. Another neighbor is yelling at her teenagers. Another neighbor is working on ATVs in his driveway, which is next to my backyard, with mechanic's drop lights on, and ATV engines revving up and down, over and over, loudly. Stereos and TVs and barking dogs (not mine). Streetlights and porchlights blocking out the night sky. I can't even imagine wanting to light up the garden at night, then you couldn't see the stars at all, and you're blocking them out for your neighbors as well. And who could be bothered by spiders and such when they're sooo quiet??? not like the human neighbors. Please consider your contributions to light pollution before you install garden lighting. Light pollution deprives us of our view of the night sky, which is beautiful, and it's supposed to be dark at night, we need that period of darkness to keep our biological clocks synchronized and our mental health intact. I like to sit out on the back porch at dusk to listen for owls and to watch the bats and the stars come out. I've managed to squeeze the chaise longe into a space where the neighbor's porch light doesn't shine in my eyes, and I can still see enough of the sky to be worthwhile. There are spiders, and mosquitoes, and rats, and rabbits, and possums, and raccoons, and garter snakes, and moths, and flying termites, but so what.

Glad to hear that things are still going well for you, ole joyful. Not much action on this forum any longer, and your contributions are always welcome. We've done pretty well in retirement, but may have to "pull in our horns" a little now that we have moved my MIL to a retirement care center. She helped with one-third of the household expenses, no small thing in the very expensive San Francisco Bay Area. However, her dementia was getting worse and we felt she desperately needed (altho she didn't think so, LOL) the social community and 24/7 friendly staff. We were happy to report in the Caregivers Forum that indeed, this has been an excellent move for her. She is much more lively and engaged. She's in Asst. Living, but this facility also has a Memory Care unit which she may eventually need as she has mild dementia. Unfortunately, in the US it takes $$$ to afford these kinds of places. It costs close to $5K/month to pay for this facility, and Memory Care is even higher - currently around $7800/mo. All of this is private pay; our healthcare system is sadly unprepared for the growing group of elderly needing varying levels of eldercare. Fortunately she has the funds. This is not a Medicaid facility, the only government program that does pay for long-term care for indigent elderly. Like most of the better senior facilities in the US, they don't accept Medicaid patients. Still, we are much more fortunate than most of our family/friends, with a full pension and retiree medical benefits. We have been able to avoid drawing down our retirement savings so far, although a whopping increase of 85% to our long-term care insurance premiums that will hit Jan 2015 may require a small drawdown. We recently moved our portfolio to the same CFP firm I vetted for MIL. I'm not interested in maneuvering through a tumultuous macro-market, and decided it was worth the expense to simplify our financial lives going forward. Could I do the investing cheaper myself? Yes, of course. Could I do it as well without spending a fair amount of time researching and worrying? Nope. I'd rather spend my time doing other things!

Waypoint - i can relate to your comment about preferring cool colors and thinking about trying the warmer colors we associate so strongly with Heleniums, I struggled with how to bring them into my mostly cool color dominated garden. Only one of my areas features warmer colors. It is centered around possibly my favorite rose, Matangi. Its red orange flowers flash wirh random splashes of silvery white and its petals have silvery white undersides. The flowers are particularly long lasting. I’ve mixed in grasses (Pennisetum) and last fall added Heleniums and I think it looks very nice. So much so that I’m going to try to find more Heleniums for next year. But last fall I mixed Heleniums into my perennial bed with a certain degree of apprehension. I’ve always been attracted to the cool colors for my garden. Almost all of my many roses are in cool colors. My perennial bed is dominated by the colorful new Echinaceas, along with Agastache and Penstemon and grasses and almost everything is what would be defined as cool colors. But some of the more irresistible Echinaceas cross the line into warm colors, so I’ve just added them in anyway and found they blend in without causing any wincing. But the warmly colored Heleniums make more of a color statement than the Echinaceas do and I was worried how that would work out. This year at least the Echinaceas were pretty much done when the Heleniums started blooming so it’s been almost a non issue. I’m going to quit worrying about it. As an aside, I had my colors done years ago and based on my skin tones, eye and hair color (but mainly skin tones) I was classified as a “vivid bronze autumn”. That certainly matches with my lifelong preference for fall with its marvelous array of warm-toned leaf colors. My wardrobe consists entirely of those warm color tones. But oddly my garden has not reflected my personal style at all. Instead, I’ve always had a clear and dominant preference for the cool colors in the garden. The Heleniums are steering me in a new direction!

LOVE! A favorite memory is when I was on a tour and we were in NO and had a free afternoon, I left my traveling companion (Mom) in the room to rest and I went out and walked around in the heat and humidity. I had a great walk around in the beautiful city and stopped into a small cafe for a sandwich and first of all the a/c was such a treat LOL and then I had a glass of wine and a muffaletta sitting at a small table at the front window watching the people go by - nothing better than people watching in NO and great food and wine didn't hurt either.