Sara - glad you joined me in a joint order, and I know your garden will be lovely with all those Queen of Sweden bushes. This recent rain will definitely make them happy, and they're off to a great start in your hands. All of our gardens have evolved over time, so be patient and enjoy the growing time. I'm glad you got to catch the tail end of my spring garden, and I appreciate your kind comments. Ingrid, you're so sweet - I'm glad you enjoyed the pictures! In warmer zones like yours, you can't grow tulips and other spring bulbs, so I thought I'd share some of mine with you. You have an exquisite sense of taste and balance in your own gardens, so I appreciate so much your kind remarks about the harmony and flow in my gardens. I am woefully unartistic in any other sense of my life (can't draw worth beans), so I love your label of "garden artist'. Truthfully, I'm just the hands and it's up to the Maker of the garden for the actual artistry in action. Still, it's fun to be a part of the process and sit back in wonder at the surprises waiting in the garden at every season. My first roses bloomed this weekend - Quadra actually beat out Felix Leclerc (who is usually first), and in a cold part of the yard to boot. Time to move into summer mode! Cynthia

That's a great photo of your baby crow, Marg. Sharon, butterfly looks like it is the Northern Pearl Crescent. Thanks. I googled some other photos and the colors were a bit brighter than on the Alberta Insect site. I think the ladybug is the Three-banded lady beetle, though. Check it out...there seems to be white outlines around his black markings. Thanks for that link. Here is a link that might be useful: Three-banded Lady beetle

This thread WANTS to live! :) I brought the tortilla rollups. They couldn't be easier (though they are better with a spicier and less "chunky" sauce; I tried a new salsa and it was both too mild and too chunky for the recipe). Here's the recipe (not kidding when I say it's easy -- the key is to plan ahead because they really do need at least 24 hours to chill, preferably a couple of days) ... TORTILLA ROLLUPS 6-8 large flour tortillas 1 large tub soft cream cheese One 4 oz. can diced green chilies One 4 oz. can chopped black olives 2 tb. chopped green onions Mix all ingredients and spread on tortillas (don't spread right up to edge). Roll neatly and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for several days. Slice and serve with salsa or picquante sauce. ----------------------------- Today's rain is perfect for all my new additions -- thanks again to everyone!

Y'all, I'm working my way backwards as I try to catch up. After 2 days of trying to keep up with 2 healthy, active grandkids, I am brain-dead and my body is not much better off either. Jennifer, We enjoyed the weather with the grandkids and later had a nice visit with Jana at their house. It was our first time there since they began unpacking and I'm impressed with the progress they have made in one week's time. The outdoor tour was the most fun. They had brought photos of their rose tree (more on that in a second) in bloom when they brought the girls over and I identified it as a Peace Rose and told them this variety has a beautiful history that they needed to Google and read. So, I knew it was a tall rose as you could see it through the 8' tall windows in the master bedroom and the rose went taller than the window.....yesterday we went outside and looked at it, sitting there on the south side of their house, and that thing has to be 12-15' tall, and part of it crawls sideways along the house's eaves. It's main trunk looks like a tree trunk. Sadly it is long neglected and we are not sure how much it can be rejuvenated without killing it. Chris wanted to move it, but I nixed that idea as it grows directly adjacent to a medium sized tree (I think that one is a hackberry) and the roots undoubtedly are entwined. So, he is going to take cuttings and raise some. Then, probably each Jan or Feb of the next three years, we'll cut back one of the three long main canes by a large percentage to see if we can spur new growth on that cane. Actually, if it fails with the first cane, I don't know if they'll try again the next year with another cane. I suppose the good news is that the Climbing Peace Rose is not old enough to be original to the period when their home was built in 1932, so they could take it out if they choose without feeling like they were stripping the home of its original plant heritage. I also noticed yesterday that an otherwise weed-filled front bed that runs alongside the covered front porch has three volunteer petunias in it. That entire bed is destined to have the soil amended and small mounded shrubs planted there as it is a pretty narrow bed that could have small mounded shrubs or a ground cover or shorter types of blooming annuals or perennials, but it really doesn't have space for all 3 types of plants between the porch and the sidewalk. With the Peace Rose, I believe they would prefer a new location, so if the cuttings work out and give them plants they may end up taking out both the hackberry tree and the overgrown rose later on. The whole landscape needs work on all 4 sides, so they are busy making plans for that now that their interior is finished and they've moved in. I didn't really find anything of historical interest in their yard, plant-wise, but the back yard has a lovely crop of clover and dandelions for the bees, and that area was being visited by bees, butterflies and one dragonfly yesterday afternoon. Mammy, It is sad but true that at the end of every beautiful day (and some not so beautiful ones as well), we gardeners end up sore and achy and in need of serious pain relief. Jen, I love reseeding zinnias. Mine have reseeded in the same spot for almost 20 years, but every few years I add some new ones to the mix just to keep it all from getting too monotonous. After quite a few years of reseeding, we ended up with mostly pinks and yellows, so I had to sow reds, purples, greens, etc. to get more color back into that bed. Nothing much attracts butterflies all summer long like the zinnias do. Do you have a house full of furbabies this weekend? And, the question is, do the dogs get to hunt for Easter Eggs (or something more dog-like)? Being pooped means a great day, right? Mammy, Welcome to the group and thanks for your kind words. Zinnias were one of the first things I planted here....in 1998 in a raised bed I built behind the area where our home would be built in 1999. Sure, why not plant a garden in the middle of a field a year before construction started on the house? We came up from Texas every weekend to clear overgrown brush and trees and to put up a barbed wire fence around our 14.4 acres. With decades of overgrown vegetation that included heavy woodland, it took us forever just to clear a narrow corridor and fence the land, but coming up every weekend meant I could water my plants (I hauled water up in here cat litter jugs because we hadn't even joined the water co-op and put in our water line yet). Those first two small raised beds had tomato plants, pepper plants, a couple of herbs, hollyhocks and zinnias. What impresses me most now is that the wildlife never bothered them because they've bothered everything we've planted since moving here. I remember the first zinnias I chose were Oklahoma and Will Rogers because, why not? Try as we all might to plan, to amend soil, to do things 'just right', I tend to plunge into planting projects with great enthusiasm and joy, not with a lot of deliberate planning. I just plant stuff and wait to see how it does. How it mostly did in the beginning was that it fed a lot of deer. Nowadays I confine my vast growing experiments to areas within two fenced garden plots with 8' fences, and sometimes one other plot with only a 4' fence, to exclude the deer. More plants survive that way. While I love growing edibles, I mix in flowers and herbs in every bed, which drives my old farmer/old rancher friends absolutely start raving mad because they don't understand why I 'waste' space on anything non-edible. I can tell them until I'm blue in the face that growing food feeds our bodies but growing herbs and flowers helps feed our souls, and they just won't concede I'm right about that. Apparently by planting it all mixed when we moved here 2 decades ago, I violated some unwritten neighborhood rule that the men tended large row gardens with nothing but veggies in them (narrow rows, wide dirt spaces between them to allow the tractor to travel through the garden) and the women were relegated to herbs and flowers in pots on the porch and in a couple of flower beds near the house. I caught hell for that, but just kept on being me and doing my thing. My husband isn't a gardener anyway and works long days that include a 3 hour round-trip commute to Dallas from southern OK every work day, so we would have been in trouble if we chose to garden in the traditional neighborhood style, as we wouldn't have had veggies or fruits grown here on our property I guess. It doesn't matter what mulch you use, just use something. Mine varies from grass clippings (we mow a couple of acres and use absolutely no chemicals on our grassy areas) to chopped/shredded autumn leaves collected in the fall to purchased wood mulch. For many years, several farming/ranching friends gave us bales of old spoiled hay and I mulched like mad with those, but stopped accepting all the kind offers of mulch hay (and livestock manure) in 2010 (after friends gave us 220 square bales of hay) because of the risk of herbicide carryover. It is a lot harder to come up with enough mulch nowadays, but I am glad we have avoided contaminating our garden areas with persistent herbicides. I have had friends, including some right in my own neighborhood, accidentally contaminate their own garden soil with herbicide carryover and kill their own garden plants. They didn't even imagine this was a possibility because they choose not to use that specific class of herbicide on their property, but they forgot they purchased hay in drought years, including in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, so when they added composted cow manure and horse manure from their own barn to their garden, there was enough herbicide carryover to kill their tomato and bean plants, among other things that year. I am sure that if they'd thought about it in advance, they would have tested their composted manure by doing a bioassay, but they didn't. Luckily, being rural, they just went a little distance away on their large property and built a new garden, but it was a shame that had to abandon the well-amended soil in the original garden plot. Several years ago someone traveling down our rural road in a large spray rig apparently had some sort of accident and apparently lost several gallons of herbicide that ran into our bar ditch. We weren't home at the time, but as soon as I noticed the dying, splotchy grass and wildflowers, we stopped using grass clippings from that area, leaving them there on the ground when we mowed instead of gathering them in the grass catcher. Here we are three years later and the area that took the biggest concentration of that herbicide still remains largely weed-free, and even grass struggles to grow there. I am amazed at how long that spill has contaminated that area, even though I know that it is technically possible. Go ahead and plant those zinnias. My volunteers from past plants are sprouting in a pathway and have been for over a week now, and I have a flat of lemon-colored Profusion Zinnias to plant in the front garden today, and then I'll sow that flat with seeds of the same thing to plant in the back garden in a few weeks. The back garden is the little stepchild on our property---it is vole-infested and I don't plant it until the front garden is full because voles tend to eat anything planted too close to wintery type cold weather, making cool-season crops a no-go back there. Usually if I wait and plant the back garden in May (made easy this year by rain keeping it too wet to plant any earlier), the voles don't start eating plants until we get hot and dry in July, so at least everything back there has a chance for a while. Nancy, I know you've been busy with the family gathering and loved seeing the group photos on FB. What a large clan y'all have here! Kim, I am thinking of your mom, you, your sister (was she okay after that trip to the ER?) and the rest of your family. I hope this weekend is filled more with joy, peace and comfort than tears as y'all are traveling down a tough road right now. Sharon, I hope the service brought y'all comfort and joy yesterday as you all shared your memories of your mom. I smile when I think of her in heaven, reunited with your dad, and I see both of your parents in you and your girls. Larry, Did you get more rain? Did it freeze? George, I am sorry about your plants. I hate surprise freezes and am glad you had backups. Jacob, Can you start planting in earnest now or is the weather still too dicey? Rebecca, Sorry about the car repair bill. I hope that plant therapy helped. Amy, Is your dad doing alright? I know y'all must be busy getting ready for another wedding---this seems to be your family's year for weddings. Okay, see there...I have been paying attention and trying to stay caught up with everyone here in the group, both on FB and here on the forum, even though the girls have kept me running. Why does God give you crazy-active and crazy-busy grandkids after your body is old, exhausted and cannot run, jump and climb like it once did? We should have had the grandkids first when we were younger. I need to go start this week's thread as the weather takes aim at us yet once again, but enjoy today y'all. I intend to spend at least half of the day in the garden today. However, we did have three fire calls yesterday, and one was an All-Page, and I am concerned the All-Page fire will rekindle and ruin our Easter plans. It is odd for us to have a forest fire and not a pasture fire anyway, and our relative greenness is 89%, so that All-Page fire never should have happened. Somebody started that fire on purpose. We weren't even here....we were up at the kids' house in Ardmore, and by the time we stopped in at three stores, picked up dinner and headed home, they didn't need us at the fire. I guess we would have gone after we got home but we got lucky, and I was relieved because I felt too tired to deal with it. Dawn