My es hydrangea is in the most blazing afternoon sun. I moved it there from a place that was quite shady. It sulked for a year and then looked happy again. But now I am fighting off leaf spot that I never had a problem with before. Last year the leaf spot defoliated the whole thing. This year I've been religiously spraying it and haven't seen a sign of it. It's looking very healthy again and happy, but I have to wonder whether the leaf spot is partly a result of its more vulnerable location. I believe your iris and gladiolus will do better than before in full sun. This post was edited by sara82lee on Sun, Jun 15, 14 at 20:51

Something that bothers me in particular to this situation of mowing into the neighbor's property, is how so many people have a lawn service now. Those lawn services (at least in my perspective) don't show any regard for others properties. The yards here where I live are relatively small, yet they all use huge ride on mowers. The lawn service guy is typically a lone male having his own small business, while another might have two other guys there so, again, they created a small business with their own work ethics. I don't know what governs them and speculate they just make up their own rules. The city ordinance allows them to begin at 8 a.m. and in other area's it might be 7:30 a.m.. Here, the services across the street and next door, both sides, all arrive first thing in the morning, roaring loudly, and many times there's 4 or 5 different services arround at once! The riding mowers and the powerful blowers produce noise that is so loud, it's frightening and drowns out phone call conversations. So if the services arrive on a work day when you have a conference call, it's never good. Eagerly, I await when these loud mowers will be against the rules and outlawed. I've been reading how California is headed that route... YAY! I get why they look for fast ways to mow, but realistically, these lawns are not big enough to justify riding mowers. The one service is out there now, it's just him, so he spends over an hour mowing and blowing with professional equipment! We (neighbor and I) have side fencing. The riding mower can't get into small spaces or some around landscaping, so he just mows 4 feet, even 5 feet into my yard so he doesn't have to do any of her yard by hand. He mows so far in that he's mowed over 3 of my sprinkler heads, which are far enough away from the property line to not mow, but he seems to care none. I've gently spoken with him. He blows her yard leaves up against my home side and side fence, creating a large mound. This also happens on the opposite side of my property by another lawn service. Their services cause my property to appear to be a total of at least 8 feet less wide, at times 10 feet. They mow so low they scalp the grass, and, because of the wood fencing, it's visible they've mowed plenty over the property lines. The sad part is the lawn services do it for their mowing conveniences, so it says they have no respect for my property as long as they can more easily do their jobs for the neighbors, yet the neighbors don't ever mention it to say how sorry they are, or that they're trying to remedy it. To add insult to injury, the one neighbor has been burning pinion wood in her patio chiminera that is placed so closely to my yard and blows downwind, that my home often reeks of the burning wood. The smoke fills my yard and the smell permeates into my home. She is too close in proximity to be doing that wood burning. My home will reek like it's on fire, which I used to think it was in the walls. We are not neighbors at odds, so there's nothing going on there. She burns so much pinion wood that I wear a cloth mask to sleep in because my throat has become scratchy, and now I cough a good bit, which I suspect is due to the wood burning. My sinuses seem to be highly irritated by the smoke. My bedroom is in close proximity to her patio. I'm not far from age 70, own my home and have lived here over 25 years. Her inconsiderate styles are becoming such a pain that infringe on my life, and I'm afraid the laws don't care about me in any of these situations.

Faux stone for sure. I recommend casting the pieces in white concrete over metal lathe. White allows brighter color when a coloring agent is used. Color the concrete and press wrinkled foil into the surface as it sets up. I've seen amazingly realistic results using this technique. I would experiment with the color to mimic the look of the natural stone used in the real stonehenge. Wooden blocks with slots and tabs could be attached to the lathe at the tops of the pillars and to both ends of the bridge pieces and left un-concreted. That way you could do a test fit of the entire mock-up, and make any adjustments to the alignment, before commiting the pieces to concrete. The key to this project is that it acheives the same alignment with the sun during the summer and winter solstices as Stone Henge. Or, if you want a unique interpretation of the original, you could make the components in the shape of giant bones and call it "Bone-Henge". Just a thought.

I understand the mess and work involved (for the non professional) of putting up drywall. If you have a fairly simple straight run, especially one with no corners then just do the drywall. Its cheap and safe. Put it up. Filling the screw / nail holes requires almost no effort or sanding or cost. Leave the seams or by strips of lattice to cover them. You could put moulding on the croners too. It will look waaaaay better than what you have for little effort or cost....about $10 a sheet, installed (by you), and painted (by you). I am not sure how much drywall you are looking at and I know lugging it home is a pian. They rent a truck for $20 at HD or Lowes. Take a weekend day and get the drywall. Put of the sheets the next week. Paint it a week later. In other words take it slow and its not so bad. Good Luck!