Usually, this isn't at all the way my brain works, but the combination of thyme flowers and a patio might be a problem because of the bees. Right now my thyme is positively buzzing with the little creatures. You can hear it as you go down the walk. Since I'm using it as a groundcover, I walk past and look at the bees, and they probably ignore me. I wouldn't think it a particularly good idea to walk through there, though.

Thanks for all the responses, folks! Actually, I want to start another thread of most hated and best liked weeds. Jackie, I'm tempted to take issue with that word 'perfectionism'. To me the absolutely manicured garden suggests not a desire for beauty, but a desire for control. As you point out, allowing Nature to become a collaborator in one's garden design can bring lovely results, and to me what is most lovely is most perfect. Maniacally maintained gardens aren't necessarily the most beautiful ones around. I am a perfectionist in my own way, meaning that I always try to create the most beautiful garden I can, even if I almost invariably fail. All of which opens the way to a discussion of different ideas of beauty. Lori, you do list some ugly weeds. About the lawn: with our dry summers and for various considerations, I've never tried to have a lawn and never watered what grass struggled into existence. (Italians, by the way, go mad for what they call 'English lawns', a smooth close-clipped expanse of emerald green maintained at huge expense of water, fertilizer, and poison.) Perversely enough, we are coming to have a lawn. We've always had annual grasses that make a good show in spring and then die during the summer drought; but there's a perennial native grass that makes quite a decent lawn grass that has been expanding its territory, so that in time I think we'll actually have a permanent grass covering. Moral of the story is, I think, that you need to find adapted grass species for your lawn, that can handle periods of drought. Also, do you dislike non-grass species in your lawn? I've always enjoyed clover and English daisies and so on in my grass (I even rather like dandelions, but I know that's extreme); could you bring yourself to like them? As you point out, having something--ANYTHING--growing brings advantages with it. Some perennial grass species do go brown in periods of drought but without dying; could you live with that? Here in the summer for green I rely on the wisteria pergola, on the trees and shrubs and on the potted plants, but not on the grass. Hoovb, nice work if you can get it!! I have the highest opinion of thick blankets of mulch. However, we have a very large garden; it's too steep for anything but a tractor to get in--wheelbarrows are really difficult; I have no convenient source of mulch. For all these reasons I began to ask myself why on earth I was pulling annual grasses out of the beds, since they are simply Nature's mulch, grown in place and at no cost to myself. Certainly I mulch all I can, but the self-sown wild herbaceous plants help. Suzy, I hate mallows too, but fortunately they're not one of my major problem plants. I do pull them wherever I find them. Your comments about butterflies made me wonder about our bee and butterfly population this summer. It seems to me we haven't had many honeybees at all, and, now that you bring them up, I haven't seen many butterflies either--fewer than in other years. Note that we use no pesticides, and I doubt our farmer neighbors do either, as they grow crops for cattle feed; and we're otherwise surrounded by woods. The wasp and bumblebee populations appear healthy enough. Melissa

treebarb, I remembered vaguely the posts about lilacs. It sounds like you're on a classic gardener's curve, and are really going to know what you're doing, happily for the plants and soil in your care. My inclination is to use primitive means and pick my plants in as informed a fashion as I can, and see what happens. Our soil is exceedingly compact gray clay, as I probably said earlier, but contrary to what I used to think, I'm wondering now if it isn't close to neutral Ph: roses that other gardeners tell me get chlorotic in alkaline soils don't suffer this problem in my garden. As far as drainage is concerned, the heavy soil is compensated for by the steep slope, so aromatic and other plants that require good drainage seldom have problems. I did lose a couple of plants of rosemary last year when we had several weeks of rain in late spring, normally a dry period. With our dry summers fungal diseases aren't a great problem, though cane borer did a lot of damage this year to the roses, and I wonder if it may not continue to worsen. I grow old and older roses: Teas and Chinas, Noisettes, a few Bourbons, Hybrid Musks, Albas, Damasks, Gallicas, species and their hybrids, and a miscellany of others. I love the David Austin roses, but they don't like my conditions. I think I could become interested in Hybrid Teas, but they'd need to be carefully selected and placed. Aromatic gray-leaved hardy plants are essential: lavender, sage, rosemary, artemisia, thyme, and others. Spring-flowering bulbs do well, especially daffodils that the critters don't eat; and tall bearded iris, mostly primitive kinds, are all over the place. A lot of deciduous shrubs are at home here: mock orange, lilac, forsythia, ligustrum, for example; evergreen broadleaf shrubs are more difficult. I love box and yew, both somewhat difficult to get started. Olives are happy here (we'll see what happens when we get a cold winter), as are Italian pines and Italian cypresses, both more typically found further south, but we're in a warm spot. Bay laurel is great if it has a protected spot with some shade. I'm looking more at plants that characterize central and southern Italy, like myrtle and Pistachia lentiscus. Honeysuckle and clematis are good; so are peonies if they're correctly placed; possibly the tree peonies are easier than the herbaceous ones in sun. We've started a lot of Chinese fan palms (Trachycarpus fortunei) from seed. I grew up in north Florida with palms as part of the wild landscape and they don't have the cultural and esthetic associations for me that they do for Italians. Here often they're used in ways that suggest stuffy pretension, or a Riviera-like, highly artificial landscape; we'll see if I can introduce them into a rustic garden and make them work. I also have a lot of herbaceous perennials lately bestowed on me by friends and that I don't know well. I'll see how it all comes together. Melissa

could be moles or voles as well we get little dirt hills where they come up in our lawn--maybe not perfect cones I did not try the links for pictures we have terrible time getting rid of them from our yard-- have tried the dry bait pellets and also spraying the yard with castor oil--was out there yesterday doing that... if it is moles/voles--and you use the spray-- you should spray only part of the yard and try to move them outwards in sections-- like one third--then add the next third--then the final one--that encourages them to evacuate...