newbie, I've had the porcelain vine for about 12-15 years it behaves itself quite nicely where I have it planted. My neighbor lets it cover the roof of his carport in the summer which in turn keeps his carport cool. We thought we had lost it from the very cold winter we had, it took forever to come back. I prune it back severely every spring, no problems yet. Annette

Mmmmm...glorious fall color, Kathy. I love them all as well! Thanks for sharing these with us! :)

Party Music, I guess I got that title a couple of years ago when I just fell in love with all the acorn items I was seeing on all the blogs!I think I probably drove these sweet gals crazy raving about acorns and having them go look at every blog where I saw some! ;o) Would you believe that my sweet neighbor/friend actually found a package of pencils and bought it just because one of them had acorns on it! She gave it to me in a cute little felt candy corn along with a pair of holiday socks. Jeanne, I hadn't even noticed the typo, totally know what you mean about fingers going faster than brain. I do that myself way too often. Yes, I do love being "corny" and surrounded by my fall goodies especially the acorns. So funny how certain things just really appeal to us. Janet, I know you are covered in lots of snow right now. Was so glad to know you were warm and safe during the blizzard. Don't worry, in a few years your little ones will be like mine saying "Grandma, your Halloween stuff is too cutesy, you need "scary". LOL Punk, so glad you got to go with little DGD on Halloween. You will have lots of years for staying home to hand out candy when she is older--enjoy every minute with her NOW is my advice. I had so many sweet comments from parents of the Trick or Treaters about my outside decor. I never think of it as being much, but I guess the flag, wreath, witch, old crow gal, yard stakes, and some pumpkins do make a nice setting on the patio. Made me feel glad that I had taken the time to dig stuff out and decorate. Now on to Thanksgiving. Honestly, how did the year go by so fast?????? Luvs

I used to grown corn every year. It grows very easily here and yeah, you can use dried kernels from store bought corn but you'll have more reliable germination with seed packets because there's a lot of variables with the corn from the store, and you have to dry it for a while. They're very cheap in packets anyway and you don't have to have ears of corn hanging around waiting for them to dry out. Also if you remove the kernels from the ear wrong you could have dead seeds. Another thing to consider is you can buy the flint corn variety seed that has multiple colors in it and I think those look really neat dried. Anyway, around now is a fine time to start them although they won't grow fast until the night time temperatures are around 60 so you can wait a little if you want. I like to bunch groups of them up as close as possible so the pollen from the tassels doesn't have to travel far. I always get much better pollination when they are bunched up into small groups. You might as well get corn from them if you're growing them. You can plant them right next to each other and if they start growing at weird angles, just tie the bunch of stalks together as it grows. This'll help achieve the dried stalk bunch look you may be looking for. If you plant them around the start/middle of March, you'll have dried stalks by around the end of June, and you can store them till fall if you want. The only thing I think that is important as far as growing them, is use mostly native soil for the soil they are planted into. If you put too much compost or loose soil into the area they are planted, they won't grow well and they will fall over from a light breeze. Also as far as fertilizer goes, I never used fertilizer for corn, although they do need some nitrogen so if your soil is lacking, you will need to add some (you can tell by how the leaves look if they need it or not).