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Oh, I love any garden that has purple, lavender, or both :) Your garden sounds like a great idea! Some purple hostas would do well (they're very pretty) and maybe some white bleeding heart? Lily of the valley (just remember it's poisonous) and violets are wonderful, in front. Some sweet peas (they have all lavender, purple or white) would be beautiful. They need some sun in the spring, but would prefer a little shade for summer, so if you have big trees leafing out, that should work. Also a great choice, little violas and pansies, maybe some purrple and white columbine...and if you have a little sun in front...purple, lavender and white alyssum are beautiful and have such a nice fragrance! If there's a little sun here and there, purple, lavender and white stock are all beautiful. I planted dark purple hyacinths all along the front of my garden and the bumblebees love them! I think a birdbath is a very nice idea. Adding some plants for the bees, butterflies and birds is always so much more enjoyable...and brings life to your garden. Catmint and lavender are also great, if you have a sunny edge. My gardens are usually pink, lavender, purple and white, with a little blue...although I do have much sunnier colors in the kitchen garden (with the vegetables, fruit and herbs). Enjoy your new garden! Here's a picture of my front bed, with the bird bath. The roses are still small, but you can see the lavender and the alyssum :) Here's a close up of the pansies, in the fairy garden. This is on the shady side of the house (northeast) but the pansies love it! I think the white is verbena.

pupwhipped here...the OP of this thread. Wow, it is ALL really hard to choose isn't it?!? But, ya know, I feel a bit like a fool sometimes to be complaining about being saddled with this burden. Once when I was whining to a friend about how overwhelming it was to me to be remodeling the kitchen in my recently purchased lake home built in 1952, my friend replied, "Kathy, this should be such FUN. I would love and enjoy to the max this project you perceive as torture.....if only I could afford it." That kinda put it all in perspective. She will never get this chance, and here I am complaining about it all and not enjoying the process. But, you guys know it really is such a stress because you don't want to make a bad decision....and all this kitchen sh*t IS soooooooo expensive! Ohhhhhhhhhhh, woe is me. I do pontificate, but I will still say backsplash is going to be the end of me. Thanks for all the responses. I do think it helps to share our angst. I haven't done a tally yet, but maybe I will do that eventually to see which kitchen decision is the most difficult from our GW group perspective. But, as I mentioned before, let's all just be grateful that we are blessed to have these difficult decisions to make. Good kitchen remodel luck to us all.....and let us all be thankful for the opportunity.

More median musings posted just today: Since coming to Phoenix 1976, I have moved several times. Generally speaking, I have bought too high and sold too low, but all the while I, along with many others, have been fascinated (strictly as an observer and not at all as an investor) by housing price trends. For the past year, newspapers, including the Republic, have run repeated articles that make two points: the housing inventory (supply) has seen a dramatic rise (from 3,000 units to over 35,000 units in Phoenix) while median housing prices have not fallen or even have continued to rise. The front page of the Republics Real Estate Section now has a box that is entitled "How much has your home appreciated?"--and it is shown in median home prices by zip code. Yet, with a couple of minor exceptions, there has been scant attempt to explain this apparent contradiction of the law of supply and demand--that is, prices are supposed to fall, not rise, when supply goes up. This shrugging of shoulders is particularly curious because the explanation is not a difficult one. It is the lumping together of all houses into "one inventory" that misleadingly hides that housing prices are falling, and perhaps by a substantial amount (and not by the mere 3.5% most recently reported). By way of illustration, assume that: (i) in 2004, 100 houses sold and the median price was $250,000, meaning half sold above that amount and half below; and (ii) then in 2005, again 100 houses sold and the median price was 10% higher or $275,000does that mean housing prices went up? Absolutely not. Heres why: If in 2004, 50 houses sold for $249K and 50 sold for $2 million, the median would be $250K; and then if in 2005, there were 49 houses that sold for $220K, one for $274K, and the other 50 for $1 million, and, assuming the 100 houses in 2004 were comparable in every way to the 100 houses in 2005, the overall median housing prices would rise 10% from $250K to $275K while, in reality, the price of all but one house would have fallen dramatically. Another way to state it is this: As the ratio of expensive homes to lower-priced houses sold increases, median prices over the entirety of the housing stock will rise even if prices on all individual houses are falling. In sum, the supposed conundrum is a result of using a median housing price measure because it measures only in the aggregate and fails to take account of what happens to any single house or any reasonably close-priced houses. As Justin Lahart put it in the 11/30 Wall Street Journal, the "median price gauge"is "plucked from a large pool of prices based on home sales" that "can be skewed by changes in the composition of the pool." In other words, it is misleading to talk about "the housing market" as if $2M homes were in the same market (interchangeable with) $200K homes, because they are not. The bottom-line is that misleading metrics should be avoided, and it is wrong to use median house sale prices to reach any conclusion about price trends in housing values. And even a zip-code analysis will not remedy the problem, as illustratively seen by the radically different housing-stock mix in 85007 (stretching from the Palmcroft area to below Buckeye Road). The bad news: Median housing prices likely are understating the severity of the housing slump. The good news: The Fed likely is not looking at median housing prices in assessing the severity of the housing slump.