Well I put on the rubber boots and slogged through the swampy mess that is my back yard this afternoon. As the dogs ran rampant thru the mud of the flower beds AARRGGhhhhhhhh! I pulled away more of the dead foliage left from the fall and found a bunch of stuff sprouting. My Violas are coming along nicely, the Heuchera WSed last year) is greening up nicely and has a bunch of new sprouts and of course the day lilies have a bunch of new sprouts. I have also discovered that the lavender I started by WSing last year has survived. How exciting is that. I rubbed it and it smells great! And by the looks of the Achillea, that stuff must have been growing under the snow. Some of the new greenery is over 4" long!!

Today's forecast of 24C is going to be wonderful. My DH is going to do the final cut of grass and I want to get all the rest of the fall bulbs planted and clean up more of the flowerbeds today. Laurie, wait until we have a killing frost before you cut your canna(s) and dig and store for winter. The canna need to 'winterize' with a killing frost first. I just cut the canna stalks down to 3 or 4 inches, dig out the whole clump, trying to leave as much soil as I can on it and store in the "pit" where I keep my potatoes for the winter. The soil protects the roots from drying out in the winter. Brenda (also waiting for a killing frost to kill my begonias, callas, cannas and glads so that I can get them all put away for the winter.)

I've decided some of my daylilies' colors just aren't working for my garden color schemes. I could bring two Klehm daylilies if someone is interested. 'Smooth Vanilla Pastel' and 'Afternoon Tea Time.' Pictures are here http://www.songsparrow.com/2006new/plantdetails.cfm?ID=566&type=Daylilies&pagetype=plantdetails and here http://www.songsparrow.com/2006new/plantdetails.cfm?ID=485&type=Daylilies&pagetype=plantdetails However, the pictures (at least on my screen) are not perfect. I'd say Smooth Vanilla Pastel is really a creamy daylily with a strong chartreuse/green throat. And Afternoon Tea Time is essentially sherbet orange. They are nice, healthy plants in great condition, and they have spent the last year in my garden, enjoying a good compost-enriched soil. My yard has no daylily rust, and these plants seem free of it as well. If those would be good in your garden, let me know! At this point, I am looking for healthy shade shrubs for my back yard -- viburnums, pretty azaleas, hydrangeas, or things that can take DRY shade would be great, and a few shade perennials -- possibly asarums, carex, hakone grass -- or ...? Thanks, Julia

Here's one of our sad Heuchera with an equally sad hyacinth: But then if you just turn around on the left you'll have a bunch of darling tulips getting ready to announce themselves: and on the right are irises, which look like onions right now but they'll be coming around: Where the boxwoods now are I'd had daphnes, but they were never happy so the helpful man at the nursery and I decided to just go with the boxwoods. The green mounds in back are hollyhocks -- love them! One didn't make it, but the rest look pretty happy which makes me look pretty happy as well! At the base of the (aspen) tree dead ahead are the sad heuchera. A teeny fraction of our daffodils -- aren't they just the happiest flower? I've a few hundred of them strewn across the front of the yard, bordering the sidewalk. Planting them I think I used many, many swear words -- it was so frustrating in this soil! But now that I look at that them I think "Totally worth it!" Hopefully I can remember that when it's planting time in the fall .... The fluffy brown in between them are the ice plants, two junipers (hated junipers when I lived in CA but now I'm grateful for their evergreen nature) and a hole where a third juniper was but a wind blew away. The leggy twiggy brown on the right is a rose. I think grape hyacinths are so darn cute! But I think I made a mistake in where I planted them -- should've been right next to the walkway, where the disappointing heuchera and hyacinths are! (although in all fairness to the hyacinths, they did beautifully last year and I suspect if not for our crazy weather they might've been "better" this year) There are columbines in there as well -- what a pretty flower. Because the tulips I'd planted our first autumn here (first photo) did so well and were so beautiful, I thought I'd plant more. I'm glad I did, and seeing them get ready makes me want to plant even more! And today, as I went out in that biting wind to take these pictures (Li'l Bit's [my two year-old] napping and El Guapo [my four year-old] is seriously involved with his Lego project) I couldn't believe it -- there was a lone red tulip! El Guapo's been complaining yet here one is! I've always loved peonies. Always. I planted three in our front yard but I believe two of them (in a different section) didn't make it. I'm sad. But, when I was out front on Saturday (four days ago) there was the teeniest green nubbin poking its way through the mulch and today it is three inches high! How insane is that? So I'll cross my fingers but not hold my breath about the other two .... There was a horrible wind last summer which ripped the other two peonies and my across-the-street neighbor's large peony got wiped out as well. I didn't take any pictures of the backyard, but the blue mists I planted are all showing their sweet microscopic green leaves. There's one h-u-g-e blue mist in the backyard which we inherited, and it clearly was never cut back. I know you're supposed to cut them back in the spring but it's so big it makes it a bit difficult to tell what's coming to life and what's twiggy and / or dead. So I think I'll wait until it's "back" and then cut out the twiggy / dead parts. After I see what it's doing I'll undoubtedly come back to ask how to get it back in fighting form. Isn't it so fun to see the green poking its way through to show us spring is on its way? I love it!