I love my window boxes, hanging baskets and containers. Wherever I've lived, my gardens have always been solely perennials so this is my only real chance to splash out on showy annuals. I prefer to use traditional hayracks and wired bowls with either spaghnum moss or replaceable coco liners. My experience has been that plastic inserts may cause dampening off of the root systems - interior trays on the bottom though do help to reduce runoff. Moisture-retentive soil crystals and slow-release fertilizers granules added to the mix at time of planting makes ongoing maintenance a real breeze. Even at the height of summer, I don't usually worry if I miss a day (or even two) of watering :) I've shown some of these photos before...

emagineer - This is from the blog Cote de Texas that I provided a link to in my post. Since it's been all about "Something's Gotta Give" I thought that Nancy Meyers' follow up movie "The Holiday" needed a closer look. Just as the star of Something's Gotta Give was the Hamptons house itself, the star of the "The Holiday" wasn't really Cameron Diaz or Kate Winslet, but their two homes, one in Los Angeles and one in the English Countryside, respectively. And in another connection between the two movies, the production team was led Jon Hutman - but Beth Rubino, so wonderful on the set of SGG, was absent for The Holiday. And just as with Something's Gotta Give, Nancy Meyers' personal interior designer has photos of "The Holiday" houses on his web site, but he is not mentioned in the film credits. The Holiday, coming so soon after Something's Gotta Give received a lot of prepublicity hype concerning its premise: two women swap houses for the Christmas vacation and both find love. For lovers of the SGG house, a new Nancy Meyers movie about TWO houses was almost too good to be true ! Jim

We just finished remodeling our kitchen and the product I liked best was a Mannington sheet vinyl. I am a Realtor and am in and out of a lot of homes, and have seen AMAZINGLY life-like vinyls. I decided I wanted vinyl as we have another home that has tile, and I wanted something warmer and softer in this house...but I wanted that look. The product that we used was called Mannington Sobella Supreme Guadalajara. (The samples on the web-site don't look a thing like them...see the real samples if you can.) When I had a guy out to give me an estimate on our tile backsplash he reached down and touched our floor and said "OH! This is vinyl! I thought it was tile..." And I told him I was so happy because he was a tile expert and he couldn't tell. The other night we had some neighbors over and the husband looked at our floor and he said "Your tile floor looks nice but do you find that it is really cold?" And I said "It's vinyl." At which point he also reached down to touch it. Anyway, to each his own, but they have come a VERY long way with vinyl sheet goods. Good luck with whatever you choose, Cathy

Hi Mary, Hope this finds you doing well and that you had a very good growing season. These seeds did really well. They have been in flower for the past three months. I've never had a milkweed bloom so much. The first batch never did germinate. I have had tons of insect visits during this time but only two small pods that have not really developed much. I had three Monarch caterpillars on the plants and they pretty much stripped(ate) most of the foliage but the plants put out more leaves after the caterpillars molted.. I still have them in a 12" pot but will probably divide them once they stop flowering and plant them in the garden. I was wondering how your seed production has been this year? I would like to get a bunch of seed from somewhere to grow and distribute to all the folks here in my area who are into this like you and I. Any chance you might have some to share again or know someone who does and/or somewhere I can purchase some. Thanks for any help. Regards, Mark