Tracy - just to add a bit - A. some plants are designed to sucker - they are trailers and should be grown multicrowned B. Some plants have the tendency to sucker when they are young - and if with a help of Fred's technique you keep removing the suckers as early as possible until they mature - you are home free. C. Some plants will sucker in your conditions no matter what - pass them to somebody else - very possibly they will behave better. D. All plants sucker when stressed - exactly as Fred explained. Try to baby them a bit - and if it doesn't help - you can call them category C - and get rid of them. TGIF Irina

My grandmother just died on this past Friday. I cannot even BEGIN to express how much I love that woman and how much she meant to me and how close to her I was... there just are no words. She was already going downhill on my birthday, this past wednesday, and frankly it was a totally miserable day for me. People kept saying "happy birthday" and I wanted to scream "I WILL NEVER BE HAPPY AGAIN, ARE YOU CRAZY?" It doesn't matter that she died two days later, I will always remember this birthday as the time my beloved grandmother died and the single most painful time in my entire life so far. I guess I'm trying to say, it doesn't matter. In the jewish religion there is no choice in burial dates, it has to be done 24 hours after the death unless it falls on a holiday or shabbat so the funeral and burial was today. No it was not on my birthday, but my birthday will be forever tinged with sadness because I think that's the day I knew in my gut grandma would not be coming home. I know if grandma could have done it any other way she would have, but she had no choice in the matter. I'm sure if your mother could have had it another way too. I probably won't get around to celebrating my birthday this year and who knows if I will ever feel like it again. All I know is that sometimes you have to put aside what you want and do the right thing... that's one of the lessons my grandma taught me.

My motto is "Always leave a p**ing male alone", including DH. And secondly, I am jealous that they can and I can't. I was once in Israel's great southern desert, the Negev, traveling by car with a girlfriend, and we had to go. So we stopped the car and hiked behind a tiny hill with a tiny bush on it. An oncoming truck squealed to a stop and the driver got out, carrying a rifle. He screamed at us "You crazy women, don't you know that there are Bedouin men around here? Next time, hold it in!" Then he stood there with his rifle until we finished, adjusted ourselves, and slinked back to our car embarrassed as heck.

I think you would really enjoy the design work/ideas that the designer, Charles Faudree does. Below is a link to his website. You can go to the library to check out the books. His style is a mix of French Country and English Country, some times throwing in Swedish influences. Here are a few photo of his designs. I really highly recommend his books if this is your style. Here is a link that might be useful: Charles Faudree Web site book list