a hateful acanthus - Mr Camps had 'insisted' on this and I put up with its hugely vicious and graceless habit for several years - long enough for it to become a rampaging thug, leaning over and threatening a delicate small leafed philadelphus. Had to get my boys in to help so I made use of their youth and vigour and ordered the destruction of a horrid phormium (Mr.bloody Camps again - supposedly one of the much smaller P.cookianum, but still massive - lurking mealybugs and snails made great use of the indestructible leaves ).Heaps and heaps of valerian (but I will guarantee there will be a hidden smidgeon, waiting to blow around the allotment. Numerous verbascums (there was a mini-craze for these a few years ago, in the UK) - gets chomped by mullein moth and totally falls over every year. Note, all these plants so far have also had socking great root systems so I am not expecting this to be a one-off job - I have been yanking a lurid Beauty of Livermere oriental poppy for the past 4 years. The two gigantic clumps of daylilies (common old H.fulva) are really counted as weeding, along with a zillion verbena bonariensis but the removal of the sad and stunted balloon flowers - never got any taller than 9 inches and just looked ridiculous with oversized blooms - that was a yanking moment. Unfond farewells to lobelia cardinalis, knautia macedonica (1 is quite enough) nepeta Walker's Low - I know it's invaluable but it smells horrible and finally, the last of the bearded iris - such a faff for less than a week then nothing to disguise the hideous leaves for the rest of the summer.

Nannerbelle, I couldn't agree with you more on colors. My favorite color combinations next to the house are white, cream, blue, violet, and purple. Or, to go to the other extreme, bright orange. The first year we had beds around the house I put Tithonia in on the south side and they really looked good there. A good clear yellow like Celandine poppy looks good with Phlox divaracta, and I couldn't do without my favorite yellows in the garden, Rudbeckia fulgida, Swamp sunflower, and the Bidens that bloom everywhere in September. Laurabs, I didn't know there was a mapleleaf viburnum with yellow berries. That's interesting. I have some mapleleaf viburnum with the typical black berries, some from my FIL's yard (he has about an acre of it), and a couple purchased from the NCBG. One of my favorite shrubs for fall color, just lovely. I don't know what kind of azaleas you were thinking of getting -- below is a pic of Florida azaleas that were in front of the house before we moved it -- now they are elsewhere in the garden, as they were going to get too big. They are sweetly fragrant.

I'd like to think your rose is 'Summer Song' but I'm not really seeing that, although I have to allow for climate differences, but here the colour is very saturated with terracotta orange, and the foliage looks different on your rose.. but then I would never recognise Kevin Wood's photo as being 'SS' either.. the photo from style roses is more like mine, and they are very close to where I live.. So I'm not sure you're ever going to be certain about it, but it's always fun to speculate isn't it? rather a nice rose though whatever.. 'SS' foliage.. it's quite large, soft, and not quite leathery.. ..the blooms in this vase would be more typical of this rose.. ..strong colour on some blooms.. You could also ask Beth norcal, who is in your area, and she has it. She posted a photo of hers the other day on the Roses forum.. it's her favourite rose..

tarolli: "Tomatoes are extremely tolerant of tons of water. They do not rot. They just produce more roots." It's very easy to make tomatoes unhappy by overwatering and even kill them. As others have been saying, a lot depends on the medium people are growing in, size of containers, weather/climate, etc. And it's not always about rotting the roots. Creating conditions that impede the roots' function by making it hard for them to take up nutrients can also damage the plant, and sitting in too wet of a mix for too long does this. terry bartinson: "Looks to me like, from the replies, there are varying views on watering potted tomatoes. I'll make sure my pots/plants don't dry out." I think if fireduck and Dave (digdirt) knew more details about your weather, your growing medium, your container size/shape, etc., they'd mostly agree on the approach to take to watering. What really varies is the conditions in and around the containers of each grower. Dave and fireduck are simply addressing different scenarios, talking about different sets of assumptions, etc. The important thing is that tomato roots should be able to breathe. Lots of things besides simple volume and frequency of watering can negatively affect this. A mix that gets sludgy when moist, has a high perched water table (Seysonn has a good post on this somewhere, if you search), or one that is prone to getting compacted will suffocate roots. Another important thing is that tomatoes need enough nutrition, so if you have a well-draining mix (good) and water it frequently (good and necessary if it is actually well-draining), you will have to feed more often because you'll be constantly washing out the nutrients. On the other hand, if your mix drains poorly, it becomes very easy to overfertilize and produce excessive salts buildup in a limited space like a planter. I think that, if your pot only has moisture at the very bottom, you're waiting too long to water, especially if your pots heat up a lot in the sun. However, if you happen to be growing in a medium that has bad drainage, that makes it really hard to water correctly, no matter what you do.