Most excellent, Larissa! Babies rock! I discovered a baby growing alongside my Sumatra, and my Germa bulbs both have several new babies! Yee-Ha! "Love is like a bomb, Baby, c'mon get it on!" Can you guess what's blasting my eardrums this morning? "Pour some sugar on me... in the name of love... Pour some sugar on me... c'mon fire me up!" Oh Yeah! My fav band of all time! I'm so old... Back to the hippis... I've noticed a lot of new growth on several of my bulbs... and 3 out 4 of my Papilios are pushing up new green leaves! Outside the windows... it's frigidly cold... a whopping 17 degrees... and the mega snow is falling, or I should say, blowing... sideways!! A very good day to stay in and listen to some music... with a cup of hot coffee in one hand!

Dave, thank you for the photo of Pinus mugo 'Zundert' I think it is beautiful and Punus mugo is very hardy here. I am adding to my wish list. It sure does have nice gold coloring. Richard, thank you for your words of encouragement. I hope it looks nice. I hope I can sneak in a few of my favorite perennials too. I just don't want it to look out of place with a large flower and a small conifer. I will have to work on that. Blue yew, your wish is my command. LOL. I went out this morning and took a couple photos of the needles. Here they are: Sluice, Juniperus scopulorum 'Woodward' is gorgeous and would be PERFECT by my pond. I should be able to grow on cuttings of that. I will have to see if a few of my friends has that plant so I can nab some cuttings from them. Thank you for sharing the photos. Dax, thank you for the list of upright conifers. I will look them up and see if I can find some this spring. My Abies veitchii 'Glauca' is about 11 years old. I purchased it as a small plant from Bob & Dianne Fincham with Coenosium gardens. They send some nice plants. The only problem is the cost of shipping is OUTRAGEOUS. Waas, you are right the Abies veitchii 'Glauca' even though I purchased the smallest plant they had for sale was still rather expensive. Dennis, thank you for the name correction. I will make a note of that. I've had my Pinus parviflora Adcocks Dwarf for about 5 years. I was going to try wintering this year without protection but I'm a little worried now by your comment. I am growing another Pinus Parviflora called Ibo-can for about eight year and the past 3 winters it has been uncovered and doing well. However, we have had an abundance of snow and it has been completely covered with snow the past 3 winters. Gosh they are such beautiful conifers. I hope they don't die out on me. I've had troubles with that happening. I tried 2 Pseudotsuga menziesii 'Graceful Grace' and each of them have slowly died on me after I took off the winter protection. It seemed each winter a branch would turn brown/crispy and soon the entire plant died. I will keep you posted on how my parvifloras do.

Does henbit count?! Okay, that's a winter blooming weed... I did plant some sasanqua camellias last year but they are already done blooming. Am hoping in future years they will bloom a bit later and longer! I do have a bit of leftover fall color - roses still blooming, reblooming irises sending up new scapes, etc. Also, I plant a lot of mixed lettuce greens and edible kale - in addition to being tasty, offer nice color and texture to the winter garden. Otherwise, not much for color, John. Generally I tend to just enjoy the falling leaves right now. Last fall I was going to plant pansies in several areas , but was in a serious car accident late October and couldn't bend right most of the winter. This year I am 8 months pregnant and still can't bend!!! Maybe next year... ~ Suzie

What an uplifting thread! Things that recently brought me joy: Finding a Vizsla puppy on Sunday and watching him chase my 100 lb black lab around the house all afternoon until his owner retrieved him from us. Listening to the funny comments my kids were making as they put their many years of ornaments on the Christmas tree. Making dinner last night and my younger two kids asking if they could help me make the marinade and chop the vegetables. Seeing my 72 y/o mother asleep on my couch Saturday night with a book propped up on her lap...a familiar sight from my youth. Her love of reading inspired my own. Walking through the mall and seeing all the little ones dressed up in Christmas clothes on their way to see Santa. Mine have outgrown that. Watching my 10 y/o finish a local 5K race, 20th place overall out of over 200+ runners (first place in his age group), and seeing his sprint to the finish, passing a man at the last minute who had been running ahead of us for the last mile. While he's a good athlete on team sports, he struggles mightily in school due to a learning disability and as a result, suffers from low self esteem. He has recently found a love of running, something that he's really good at as an individual, which is great for his self-esteem. This note, that my 8 y/o left for our "elf on the shelf" - this was the first one which she left for him two weeks ago. She wrote another the other night which had dh laughing so hard he couldn't even read it aloud to me. Among other things in the second note, she wanted to know if all elves have squeaky voices. :) This post was edited by fourkids4us on Tue, Dec 17, 13 at 21:58