It's a great addiction though, right? LOL..It can be costly but what the heck..There was only 1 plant in all the yrs of growing, where I paid over 40.00, well, honestly, it was 75.00..LOL..and that was a gardenia tree..I remember thinking 20.00 was extravagant, lol..Most of the time I look for bargains, or buy small plants..for instance, we went to HD last wkend..they had different size succulent pots..small was inexpensive whereas larger plants were at least 15.00+, so I stuck w/the small..I know they'll take longer to get to that size, but I figure I can buy more than one type for 15.00.. Speaking of succulents, I don't know how many ppl here enjoy them, but many HD's are having a huge sale and so many varieties..think they're getting plants from another nursery..they're fantastic..I found a baby variegated Kalanchoe for 1.99..it's really pretty, never seen one like it..it was the last left, so I grabbed it up fast..Toni

Suebot - don't think i'm going to tell you anything that somebody else hasn't said, but since i've had too much experience with deer & rabbits, i figured i'd concur with the remedies that worked for me. i used to live/learned to garden on nantucket and martha's vineyard, where the deer are at least as unreasonably tame and probably more abundant than they are in ct. i've heard stories of people standing 10 ft away from them yelling at them while they chomp on their hydrangea flower buds. one woman i was talking to claimed she saw the deer attacking her dalmation!! anyway, my first thought about your original message was are you sure all damage is due to deer and not rabbits? - when they stand on their hind legs, they can eat quite high - on a couple of my client's properties on the islands, i had more problems with bunnies than deer, especially with my daylilies & echinacea. so, i also found success with the deer away spray products; i can't remember which one i used, but i believe it had garlic & mint in it and i actually liked the way it smelled. the directions said to spray every couple of weeks (??), but i found that i had to spray every couple of days or so & definitely after a rain. it was pretty time consuming. unfortunately, my other success was fencing in the gardens. i just tried to be decorative about it - i used nice cedar posts with caps, bird netting @ 4' high (you can't really see it, so the garden still looks nice), i hung rope along the top of the netting (for a nautical look...). I did throw netting on top of the gardens in the spring until things grew too tall, but i have to admit, the deer hopped in a couple of times (- that would've been a mess i kind of would have liked to see). i now live in maine and have a large cutting garden in my back yard, a good distance from my house and i use the bird netting as the fencing (simply because it was the only fencing i could find that would be high enough in one piece) and it works (doesn't handle snow load, though). i see deer in the back and they walk right around the garden. chipmunks are now my problem. unfortunately, my true feeling is that if the deer want to get to something, they will. sorry to be so lengthy, good luck. just out of curiosity, do you have phlox and is it being eaten - that always gets destroyed the worst for me. -mara

I like your thinking about seeking fixture colors that are paler versions of some of the truly period mid century colors. As the owner of a pink bathroom, I've polled people for years, and I think some retro colors are a little hard-core for most modern homebuyers...except for a brave sliver of the population who love them dearly. I wondered about pale gray fixtures, coupled with a pastel tile in one of the colors you described (perhaps tile accents/borders in a pale gray, to tie in the fixtures?) Are any nice fixtures available in soft grays? I read an article not too long ago about how popular gray was, as a wall paint color, in the 50's-60's. Maybe a creative (over the top?) approach with pastel colored tile would prevent you from having bathrooms that felt boring to you. It's no fun to spend lots of money and not be excited with the results, so I sympathize. No wonder you are frustrated.

Bart, about lilacs and peonies and winter chill. I suspect you could grow them, though you should look around and see what people have in their gardens in your area. We've had a couple of winters in late years where the temperatures hardly fell below freezing; there was one year when my Salvia guarantica never froze back and got up to fourteen feet the following summer, and the Teas starting blooming in March. But, even that year, the tulips and cherries, the peonies and lilacs, the once blooming old roses all flowered. There are different kinds of lilacs, but the classic ones everybody knows are bred from Syringa vulgaris, which is the semi-wild lilac, I'm guessing, that you got suckers from, and with similar needs. Where to buy them from is a question. Early on I bought all the kinds they had from Priola, though their real interest is perennials, not shrubs; then a local nursery for some years offered color coded varieties, without the names though they were named kinds, and picked up similar ones from another nursery, also color coded. My impression is that there are a handful of varieties that are fairly common, and others will take more looking, or you really need to go to a specialist, which could be expensive. Pay attention to the rootstock, as I believe some lilacs are grafted on the species and their growth is identical. They can come own root, and I think most of mine started life as suckers. Lilacs are tolerant, but what they really like is amended clay and full sun. Peonies, both tree and herbaceous, like part shade in summer, more sun in winter, at least, this is how I grow them. They like the same kind of soil as roses and tomatoes: a good stout clay well amended with organic matter, the hole well dug. I've had trouble getting them started, too, mainly because I didn't prepare holes adequately in our terrible ground. That's why I was thorough when I thought up the peony walk. Sometimes peonies will hold out in conditions where nothing else will grow, but you can't rely on it. I don't think they like to bake in the sun in shallow light soil. There are Mediterranean peonies, too, herbaceous, and there are a few good ones that are pretty easy to find: the double red whose name I forget, 'Mollis', and P. peregrina, commonly found in the form of two named varieties. I'm writing a bit hastily right now; I have to go. Anyway, if your interested you should look into them, both do really well here, and I think they likely would in your area, too. Krista, think how much spring you have ahead of you! All that pleasure ahead. Wisteria is wonderful. People complain about it, but to me it's beautiful in every season, and it will be in every garden I ever plant where the climate allows.