We're still very, very busy in my garden as I always try to do too much. The pear and apple trees are loaded with fruit despite the fact they have shared fire blight. Mr. Man had to cut back some of the limbs that were breaking due to the heavy weight of the pears. He also cut back the limbs most affected by the fire blight. The grapefruit and Meyer lemon have lots of fruit for the first year. Yesterday we ate the three peaches that were on the peach tree. When we bit in they were so juicy that the juice shot out all over our faces, hands and shirts. Aahhh, to have to wait another year for more of these delicious peaches. Lost 5 citrus trees that were leafing out this spring. Just planted them in the fall. Had a late 32 degree night. Didn't cover them with a frost blanket as I had during the winter thinking it wasn't going to be cold enough to hurt them. Wrong. The kumquat is just beginning to set fruit and it looks like it is going to be a bumper year for this tree. If I can just keep my grands from picking them this year. I can always tell which grand picks this tree as to how high from the ground the fruit is gone. The pecan trees actually have pecans...the first time in 3-4 years. Again, thanks to the hurricanes. The Concord grape vines are absolutely loaded with grapes despite the fact that the County Extension agent says Concord grapes will not grow under any circumstances in our area. I'm not going to tell the grapes this as this is their 8th year and third transplant later. (Note to Self: Take a pic and pick some grapes to put on his desk as soon as they are ripe.) The tomato plants look downright pityful. Guess didn't get enough water when they needed it, bless their hearts. The hyacinth beans are getting large enough that Christian and the grands are going to help me make their teepee today with the vines. Tiny, tiny frogs are jumping all over the rocks around the pond. Still quite a few tadpoles in the pond. Cleaned out the kid's swimming pool for the second time this summer as the pump went out and had to find a new one that fit. There must have been a gazillion large tadpoles in the pool squiggling and wiggling all around Mr. Man's feet while he was cleaning it out. Thank God for this man...don't know that I could have done it. Missed the time to trim back my roses before their first big burst of bloom. Just trimmed them back. Hopefully, this won't harm them too much. Almost finished with my new daylily bed a friend has been helping me design and plant. This has been a major project as we killed all grass and weeds this spring, put down an irrigation system, put down four layers of newspaper, cut open 280 brown paper bags I purchased fromt the local grocery and put over the newspaper, and then put down 32 bails of pinestraw, in hopes of controlling the weeds and water conservation. We are now on 'phase 3'...putting in the walkway. This has been planned since before Katrina and is FINALLY coming to life. Friends all over have been giving me daylilies for this bed and all but about a dozen have been planted. The clome volunteers are now about 3-4 feet high in this bed and look so pretty. I just love this little plants...like the Everready battery, they just keep going and going. Have transplanted some herbs from the destroyed herb bed (thanks Katrina) to the new Fairy Garden that we made last fall around the little pond. Now need to mow down the herbs that I'm not going to transplant. Now, need to start concentrating on getting the other countless plants-in-pots in the ground.

I think hollies do well in a partial shade area (I'm assuming since this is a western exposure, we are talking shade and possibly deep shade area). Also consider a tall Emerald cedar which is already columnar. Very popular up here in Ontario. Ianna

How nice this thread got bumped! I enjoyed re-reading it and thinking about how much the yard has changed in a year. My bird-friendly yard is evolving. Have made great progress removing invasives, particularly Bittersweet, Buckthorn, and Norway Maples (treework cost me $2000 last year and there's still one GINORMOUS Norway maple left). There was a lot of brush created by all this tree/shrub work. Some was burned this Spring, right smack in the middle of the Oriental bittersweet patch, but the rest is in piles. The brush piles attract a lot of birds, particularly Sparrows, Cardinals, Juncos, and Wrens. The birds also love the back half-acre, which is wild and full of Crabapples, Choke Cherries, White Pine, and still some invasives like Honeysuckle and Autumn olive. Also making great progress on growing bird-friendly natives. Purchased another 50 native tree/shrub seedlings from the NH Nursery. That makes 130 total between this year and last - all of which ultimately make berries/nuts for the birds and wildlife. Most of them are in holding beds and haven't flowered yet, too little, but I've given away some and started to plant out a few. I winter-sowed many native species of perennials, annuals, and vines. Exactly where all this stuff is going, is not completely clear at this point, but I'm creating lasagne beds like crazy! The birds are always flitting around the yard and it's only going to get more interesting and fruitful for them (hopefully). It's great!

my sister has tons of birds around her place and many eat off the ground under the seed feeders. she just about gave up on feeding birds cause the stray cats wound lay under her shrubs and bushes and pounce on the birds. She found some green enameled fence at home depot and put 4 green metal fence posts in the ground and wraped the fence around them. it did not take long for the birds to get used to it and the green color was not very noticeable except close up because it blended in with the surrounding plants. she can still fill the seed feeders from a short step ladder. and says she has not lost any birds lately.