Rita - Those sound like good butterfly attracting plants. I have two butterfly bushes in my island bed and purple coneflowers in one of my borders. I have grown zinnias and cosmos before, and they were excellent butterfly attractors. Here's what I've put in the new bed: Turn Of The Century hardy hibiscus (1) A new lantana that is hardy to my area called Chapel Hill Yellow(3) Rajun Cajun ruella(2), a red hummingbird attractor - a tender perennial that is supposed to overwinter in my zone. Garden phoxes Bright Eyes and David (3) Becky Shasta daisy (1) Rudebeckia goldstrum (1) Homestead purple verbena (2) Aster Viking Star (1) I would like to add some sedum, cosmos and zinnias, but I'm already running out of room for daylilies!!! I'll have to post some photos of the new bed when I get it all planted. Debra

Hi, Lucky you to get a built in garden! You don't have to do anything to raspberry bushes, they grow fine on their own. Some people prune them and try to make them stay in a certain spot or grow between guide wires, but that isn't necessary. Just pull out or mow the ones that come up where you don't want them. Bugs don't really bother raspberries. Grapevines should have some pruning done to them every year or two, but if you ignore that for one year (sounds like your yard might be overwhelming) there really won't be a problem. Unless you have trouble with them they don't need spraying with anything either. Fertilizing around the vines with compost never hurts. The Fruit & Orchard forum is a good place to ask for advice about berries, grapes, and apple trees. For the apple tree, you should be spraying with something after the blossoms fall, if you want to prevent bugs from getting them all. I have an organic fruit tree spray (powder) I got from Gardens Alive! and a 1 gallon size sprayer that I got for about $5 at Menards some years ago. There is also a dormant oil that you can use to spray stuff on so it sticks better and suffocates the worms I think. Please don't kill any plants until you are sure it isn't 'something.' Offer plants you don't want to neighbors or on freecycle. The people who bought my house killed almost everything (10 fruit trees, raspberries, rhubarb, asparagus, thousands of flowers, etc.) They left one pear tree and the next owner took that down. It hasn't even been 3 years since I moved, sigh. Between the 2 sets of plant-hating new owners, they killed thousands of dollars worth of trees, shrubs, and flowers. I tried to talk to both sets of owners about the plants, they had no interest. If your previous owner is still alive, I am sure they would be glad to give you some helpful hints on what was where and how to take care of it. Try calling or writing them, gardeners usually love to talk about their gardens! You could at the least get some good plant IDs from them. Good luck! Don't worry too much, remember that nature is good at growing things regardless of your help. Marcia (hosting the SE WI plant swap on May 20th)

I use Chrome all the time, but also have FireFox as a backup. Of course IE, as well, but I never use it. Ditto! I'll share this story in case it ever happens to you or someone else: This past week I did a Windows 7 update (one of those routine updates requested by Microsoft), and when it was finished Chrome couldn't load pages for me. I learned that if I'd turned down the automatic offer to reload all my tabs, Chrome probably would have been fine. But I clicked "Restore," and then Chrome failed. I looked up the problem, and found lots of people asking about it on tech sites. Must be a common issue. I attempted several of their solutions, but couldn't figure out how to do them. Then I cam upon this easy one, and it worked! After my computer does a window's update, chrome almost never works. I can't get into settings or anything, nor can I load any web pages. I found a simple fix. Do a control-alt-delete and go into task manager. Close all chrome programs in all the tabs. Once you close all the processes, reopen chrome. It loads for me. Also, be careful NOT to restore previous tabs. Ignore the âÂÂrestoreâ request, and just start from scratch.

they often need 2 or 3 years to really put down roots, some nurseries recommend to plant them in spring as they tend to suffer after fall panting. plus, they do spread, so are definitely not the right plant for small/ narrow borders (4-5 feet or less), so don`t blame it on the plant but make sure that you can provide enough space (just like for a Great Dane...) we have mild climate (7-ish) and they are wintergreen for me, stopping shortly when it freezes, and after 5 years+ mine are almost 4 feet wide (one plant) I just pull up emerging shoots when they start crowding nice Hostas, and find them quite easy to regulate, there are far worse spreaders. But they do need some space, so yes, if your border is rather smallish, be brave, shovel prune them and jump at the opportunity to research for something new to fill he gap ;-) otherwise, (in heavy soil), they last long and are really workhorses, not fussy, and such a great show in early fall