Promise, I've definitely been watching the specific places where I want to put my plants. Right now, the living room window and garage window are my best bets for south-facing window lighting (as shown in the pictures). After I get that sofa table up, and we get more of our crap unpacked and put away, I want to put something similar in the garage beneath that window; so that'll be a place for my more cold-tolerant plants. My office gets really not a lot of light, so I'm trying out my medium-light plants in there (none of which are succulents). Of the plants I currently have outside, those that will remain out there will go into a little greenhouse setup - nothing big and fancy, as I don't have the room (or the money), just a little something with enough racks for me to comfortably house my little lovelies and protect them from frost. I'm looking for something along these lines: 4-Tier Grow-Rack Mini Greenhouse Of all my potential outdoor location options, by the front door seems to be the best, as it's protected from wind and rain. The walls also tend to retain solar heat, so that'll help keep the plants warmer a bit longer as evening sets in. I'm still trying to get a feel for placement for a few other plants, mostly non-succulent house plants - I have a ginormous peace lily that would love bright sunlight, but wouldn't survive the cold outdoors, and it's not something I can just bring inside in the evening (plant + pot + soil = at least 100#s, if not more). My Dracaena Dragon Tree and Queen Palm are desiring more light than they're presently getting (I don't know who's bright idea it was to get a Queen Palm - those suckers are thirsty buggers, and this is a desert - but I'm doing my best to keep it happy); and I have a ginger that seems to be about ready to give up (even when it's warm enough out to put it outdoors, the air is just too dry here, and the leaves desiccate in a matter of hours). So I'll certainly be making observations for a while yet. I'm just glad we got the unit that we did. Our place is part of a duplex (two separate units in one housing structure), and the adjoining unit doesn't have any south-facing windows. If we'd ended up in that one, I'd have been completely screwed. %P *CG*

I kinda got the shade thing down, believe it or not, most of that garden gets a lot of direct sun in the late morning, early afternoon and then again some in the late afternoon from the other direction. My biggest problem under the trees is the MOISTURE content and the hard dry soil. I need to find plants that can tolerate really dry conditions as well as some shade. I have some daylilies and just started adding some epimedium, so far, so good. One area gets less sun and has more moisture and it does well, I have fern and hosta, huchera, tiarella, and some others that do well there. My biggest problem is the area that is dry. Thanks for the direction to the shade forum, I hadn't thought of that as a reference. I guess because my garden does get a bit of sun, and it is dry that I didn't associate the two. I know a lot of the plants you list above like it on the moist side...I tried astilbe when I first started, not the right site at all. Now I am more versed in plants and their requirements and try to match the site to the plant as best I can. Thanks JoAnn

"My SD adamantly does not want to live with her mother." She just has to keep telling the judge or social worker that. And she has to explain why in detail ... mom never follows through on things, mom lies about what happens, new SO scares her and her mom ... whatever it true and verifiable. "Yet her mother persists in messing with this child's head ... telling her things like "I registered you in school" and "we went to an open house at your new school" And none of this has happened? Or is the BM making plans without her daughter, making a fantasy life and pretending that it's going to happen? You can explain this to her as that her mom has a hard time accepting real life, and is hjoping that pretending it will happen vcan make it happen ... much like a 3-year old will pretend to have a horsie. "... and bribing this child with just about anything, promises galore." Which the SD knows aren't going to happen. "Oh, and here's my personal favorite: "God didn't want you to live in an apartment, so that's why I let you live with your Dad. Now that we've moved into our new house, God wants you back with me" ..." YIKES! Tell the SD that if God REALLY wants her to go live with her BM, God will appear to the SD and tell her so himself! "But in the meantime, what can I say to my SD to help her get through this? It's so very tempting for me to scream 'YOUR MOTHER IS CRAZIER THAN A LOON" ... but of course I don't." She's probably old enough to understand that her mom has "problems" and is living in a pretend world where everything goes her mom's way. You could say "it's a kind of being crazy, where she just doesn't believe she can't have her own way, so she keeps trying to make it happen." Keep telling her that the her dad, you, and the law are ALL on her side ... point out the laws which probably say that a child over the age of 10 or so has a lot of input inot the custody issues.

Hi, finally catching up on all these great responses. It is a gorgeous flower and worthy of much conversation. I discovered it only insofar as it was a component of a wildflower seed mix from American Meadows that I sowed on a late afternoon just before a snowstorm in December 2016. By Spring 2018 many gorgeous perennials and biennials had grown from that seed packet, including our beloved blue flax. On the American Meadows page, it calls it "Linum perenne" but elsewhere says "This species is named "lewisii" in honor of Meriwether Lewis..." so I'm not sure if it's L. perenne, the old world native, or L. lewisii, the American native. But apparently sometimes L. lewisii is called L. perenne var. lewisii just to make things interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a drainage issue, though many plants right next door to it made it through the winter just fine. (A notable exception was a Penstemon 'Prairie Dusk', and of course all penstemon need really good drainage.) Katob, good eye with noticing the Siberian Wallflower growing right next to it, and it came in the same seed mix. Apparently depends on the growing conditions it can act either as a biennial or a perennial, and sadly for me it was a biennial, just blooming in 2018, then, along with its neighbor the Blue Flax, returned to the dust from whence it came. That gorgeous blue and stunning orange were the highlights of my spring garden last year. I don't know yet if I have seedlings to carry on the tradition.