Rosewitch, England was definitely one of my favorite places I have ever visited. My folks took me there when I was 14, and I remember bits and pieces the Crown jewels, walking amongst the Stonehenge stones (roped off now, vandalism), Stratford upon Avon. Time for me to take my own 14YO. Im trying to think how I can get over there for a whole summer, LOL. Dlynn, I could have worked so much more. I didnt really look at night time stuff and there was loads to do. Greece: cant help you, but shoot Yasou a line, she went a few years ago. LOL Annie! Teresa, well go together. I wanted to explore more cooking and food shops/stores but didnt get to. Terri, here is more a link to Pictures of England, a website pointed out to me by Denise. I started it on Bourton on the Water, where we stayed for a few days. Thanks Sharon, I was actually thinking how can I even come close to posting her quality of travel guides, I dont do the pictures she does LOL. We might have sat at the same table in the Cheshire Cheeses dining room! Sawdust still there, but we didnt make it to the cellar. I missed a lot of the British Museum. It has changed.check out the new atrium. I couldnt keep up with DH and DS16. Afternoons, when I planned museums, I crashed. Next time! Pam, lots of people did more than we did per day! Theater every night, more attractions, I cant imagine. Gina heh heh yeah I need another vacation like a hole in my head. Speaking of whichDH has another week off in August. Nooooooooo! Kathleen, DH says he took an average of 200 pictures a day. Yup. Me, I just buy the post cards or Google the images, same thing (DARFC from the photo bugs here) Cathy, thanks for giving me the War and Peace moniker heh heh. Next time I go with CF friends! LindaC, I know. Im still exhausted. Speaking of the V&A, did you know there was a Dale Chihuly chandelier in the entrance room?

I just finished in the past hour Traces Remain: Essays and Explorations by Charles Nicholl, one of my favorite writers. Three of his earlier books I can read over and over and always find something I never considered before: 1) The Fruit Palace ( I think this is subtitled: On the Trail of the Great Cocaine Story -- anyway that's what it's about, two of his forays into Colombia in the 1970s and 1980s); 2) The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe; and 3) The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street. I feel that I will ponder Traces Remain for a long time as well. The essays included are short pieces that I suspect anticipated Nicholl's longer explorations, such as: "A 'Naughty House': Mr. Mountjoy at the Magistrates' Court" (Christopher Mountjoy, a French Huguenot immigrant, was Shakespeare's landlord in Silver Street. It seems he might have been a pimp too,) "A Canterbury Tale: Christopher Marlowe's Boyhood" "The Life etc.: Shakespeare's First Biographer" (Nicholas Rowe, his "Mr. William Shakespeare" was written as a preface to a new edition of The Plays published 1702) However, Nicholl seems to have boundless interests -- from many times and many places. He obviously gets a kick out of literary forensic research. Three that tickle me are: "Screaming in the Castle: The Case of Beatrice Cenci" (Beatrice was executed in Rome in 1599 for the murder of her father) "The Wind Comes Up Out of Nowhere: Arthur Cravan in Mexico" (Cravan was a boxer who was also a poet! and the nephew of Oscar Wilde's wife Constance. But he's most famous for his disappearance in Mexico in 1918. "Mystery at Moonlight Cottage: The Disappearance of Jim Thompson" (Thompson vanished in Malaysia in 1967.) There are twenty-five essays in this book, but I could read fifty or a hundred more! I hope another collection is published.

Kim, The tomato plants are declining already? I'm not horribly surprised because your location is so much like mine, but probably hotter and drier, neither of which is good. And then I kept reading and saw your next post. When one door (or garden gate) closes, God opens another one. I know you will end up where you're meant to be at this stage in your life's journey, but I still am sorry you're going through this. Megan, You've certainly got a lot going on, but I know you can handle it all. I will keep your friend in my thoughts and prayers. Unexpected deaths can rock a family's world, and I do not think you were being insensitive---your family is affected by this loss as well. It is hard when established routines fall apart and you must instantly regroup and form a new routine. I am LOLing at your crazy voice. I have one as well and use it so seldom that it freaks out my family. That crazy voice is power, woman, pure power. If it is any consolation, Tim had iliotibial band issues when he was running marathons, and after he cut back drastically on his mileage and rested his knee quite a bit the IT band issues went away. Your Indian blanket might be stretching to get more light, but I've noticed the ones in our front pasture (from a seed mix from Wildseed Farms that I used to overseed the pasture a few years back) are stretching and getting tall too and they do not have a shade issue. I suspect it is the heat making them act that way, but that is based only on intuition...and, also, I guess, on observation and comparing those observations in any given year to plant behavior that occurred that year. Hailey, I'm sorry about the tomato plant. Are the ants actually doing anything? Or, are they just around? Usually ants (except for fire ants) are beneficial in a garden, and even serve as pollinators in some cases, so I leave the ants alone. Of course, sometimes they farm aphids, but I've found that knocking the aphids off the plants with a sharp stream of water every day for a few days takes care of the aphid problem and then the ants that were farming them go find something or someone else. Jennifer, Your wish is my command..... Nancy, Keep whatever plants give you the most joy and move the others. This year I'm mostly growing for joy, not high yield. When there is in internal struggle within me over/between planting what I want to plant (mostly flowers) and worrying about where to put the veggies I should grow if I plant all those flowers, I tell myself to "choose joy" and I plant the flowers. I'm not really sorry about that either. For so many years, I've grown for yield so I'd have tons of food to put up. This year is not one of those years. I'm trying to make it be exactly the opposite, in fact. Choose joy. For years I mostly avoided the perennial/annual issue by promising myself I'd plant the perennials when the soil finally got to the right point. Well, the soil is there now, but I am finding it hard to give up the masses of annual flowers that bloom over a prolonged period in exchange for perennials that bloom for a shorter period. I think it is possible to have both of them together but it makes more sense to go heavier with perennials. I just cannot give up my favorite annuals., though I do add a few more perennials each year. Having said that I cannot give up all the annuals, I am always so stunned by how quickly perennials grow and start blooming and start looking gorgeous that I know I ought to plant a lot fewer annuals and a lot more perennials. I guess if I just keep planting a handful of perennials each year, then sooner or later, there's going to be a lot less available space for annuals. Bruce, It already is too hot, but maybe you'll catch a break and have some cooler weather next week. Amy, I'm waving back at your and hope the Sisterhood of the Traveling Plants had a great lunch. I spent about 10 minutes in my garden today, mostly just checking on things and watering plants in flats. Everything looks so pitifully hot and dry, but certainly the cool season plants. We are too hot, too dry and too windy for mid-May. Too many spider mites. Too many grasshoppers. Too much of it all. I think it is going to be a rough summer. We spent the day with the granddaughters. I'll spare you a long recitation of what we did, but here are the key words: Fort Worth Zoo, the African Savannah, flamingos, lions, tigers, literally thousands of people, and eating at lunch The Crocodile Cafe where you can watch the crocs underwater/floating on the surface of the water outside your window while you eat. I confess that as we ate, the crocs also were watching us and I was wondering if they'd think we'd be a good lunch....for them. And, my favorite part of the day, hearing the three year old say "Thank you PaPa". It was worth every minute I did not spend in the garden. Oh, and I did take great joy is looking at the zoo landscaping and playing 'name that plant' with myself. A cougar attacked two bicyclists in Washington state and killed one, while injuring the other. No words. For those of you who don't know, I had two cougar encounters near my garden in a drought summer about a decade ago. I'll never get over it, but I try not to overthink it or to worry endlessly about it happening again. Reading this news story brought it all back to me. If I could block this memory from my brain, I would. Hard garden decisions await tomorrow. That's a topic for another day. Dawn

Our heater came on last night, Jennifer, and this morning. Oh you have dresses, don't you? Of course you do. LOL The strawberries at school are stretching up, too. I ran in this morning to see how things looked (wet in the low spot, but great everywhere else. And then back here to mow, and then weeded a bit. But on days that I mow, I mostly don't do a lot of other stuff. And sometimes NOTHING else. Garry had to get under the deck and put a cinder block under the steps supporting beam, as the steps had sunk some on one side. That was just about an all day project. Now we need to go get a couple pieces of lattice. And I need him to get the deck power-washed so I can get to painting. I am shocked--rain tonight and in the morning? Wow. I had a BUNCH of petunias coming up in the wheelbarrow. This morning I noticed they were all stripped to the stems. What is odd is that I have larger petunias in many other containers and they are untouched. I sure hope they STAY untouched! Do any of you have any idea what could have stripped those? It was a great day for mowing, but every time I went out just to sit, too chilly, so then I'd have to go walk around. There's not much action in terms of color. Stuff is happening very slowly. Verbena bonariensis, spider wort, hollyhock zebrinas are filling in, and the nicotiana, petunias, astilbes, and rose campion are JUST beginning. The hydrangeas are enormous, but taking their sweet time to bloom. Since they've been here (this is their fifth year), this is the latest they've been; usually by now they're in full bloom. I'm kinda liking this. I was looking at photos from 2 yrs ago. We are a couple weeks behind we were then. All's good out in the vegetable beds. I am a little freaked out with the flower beds. Remember, I panted SO many things last year. Sort of knew this could happen. . . . I see stuff coming up. Not remembering what I planted. Being fairly certain what's weeds and what's not. BUT just because I realize something is not a weed, doesn't really mean I have any idea what it is! There's a clumping plant out there--an obvious member of the mint faily (wow! Way to narrow it down, right? LOL) But it has no scent whatsoever. Rule out most herbs, right? The tiny worrisome part is that it is also sprouting in the veggie raised beds. . . What did you do now, Nancy! I know I have hyssop out there, several basils, but what else, no idea. No excuse for being in this position. Oh, wait. I have a list of stuff I planted out there in all the beds. I will have to retrieve and figure it out maybe. THIS year I was very careful to plant the labels with the plants. And then got the green beans mixed up with the okra, and now I'm not sure which is which. No matter--they're in styrofoam cups. I expect they'll let me know who is who. I soaked them all first, so they're sprouting up in record time--like 3 day was the earliest. I had ordered five aster tataricus from this obscure (obscure to US in OK--might be famous as all get-out in northern CA) nursery called Digging Dog Nursery. I ordered them in February. When I researched them and searched for sellers, this was the first one I found after much time looking. So it was a complete crap shoot. Then my debit card had a couple unathorized charges in Feb/March, so ordered a new one. Got an email from DD that my number didn't work; didn't see the email until maybe 7-10 days after they sent it. So called them frantically with new number. Then nothing.. . . 7-10 days later, got a voice mail from them saying perhaps they got the number wrong, could I call them. Well it was in the middle of a bunch of other stuff--plants for the school, phone calls from church people, and some family stuff. I totally forgot. But when the plant didn't arrive about when they should have, I called the nursery and wondered what the status was. She reminded me she'd left me a voice mail. I tell ya, friends, I am losing it!! BUT!! My plants arrived two days ago. They look healthy and perky. Do you all remember when I SO wanted my burn weed (which Jason identified correctly, of course) to be the aster tataricus. Well. At least the burn weed led me to the aster. I'm excited to see how it does. https://www.finegardening.com/plant/tatarian-aster-aster-tataricus Isn't it a riot to see the pains we all go through to get the plant of our dreams!! And of course, it's a toss of the dice.