MikeandBarb, thanks so much for your comments. As far as learning to match plants up, it is a SLOW process. I probably have 30 years on you - this is my third long-term garden - eventually you start to get some stuff right. LOL. BTW, your larkspur looks great with your bluish pink dl, but they would even do well with all those pink dls that turn out looking peachish or even orange. I've never had much luck seeding larkspur in this yard, but have had success with bachelor buttons (Centaurea cyanus). Love your caladiums! NGraham, I garden on wettish heavy clay, not very hospitable to yarrow, so its spreading is absolutely no problem for me. The dls suck up a lot of water and nutrients that the yarrow doesn't need, and the yarrows grow okay in the top few inches of duff in the bed, spreading a bit around the dls, but not enough to crowd them. The best thing about yarrows is that they come in so many colors and you can mix and match them with daylilies of all sorts. I grow Fireland, Paprika, Cerise Queen, Appleblossom, & Moonshine with/near various dls. Carmen Grower 2007 & Phalytyme21, this one's for you. Katlynnlily & Tweetypye, Apricot Profusion Zinnias also look wonderfull with a lot of warm colored daylilies and NGraham they will also look super nice with your new Sundown Echinacea and dark blue salvias and veronicas. There are 4 yellow and soft orange daylilies (think Autumn Wood) in the corners of this small square bed with the zinnias & Sundown coneflower. Newyorkrita, Nice roses - just love the house color too. Easier to work with than my orange-ish brick. Only roses I grow are the cherry red Knockouts in the far back of the yard. Haven't found any good dl matches for that color yet. Any ideas?? Vegangirl, The beebalm is Jacob Cline, a little short because of the drought. The dl is Rumble Seat Romance. A fast grower & good performer with a very crepey texture. Does not rebloom for me in zone 5. Laurel, I always use nasturtiums in my containers for their wonderful leaves, but never thought about them with dls. Good idea. Couldn't agree more with the cannas - they add a lot to a garden and I agree foliage contrast is more important with dls than the color of blooms on other perennials. That's part of the reason that dls look so good with shrubs. Your pix are lovely too and our gardens look similar - lot of mixes. Another note for NGraham, I just thought of this when looking at the fenceline in Laurels 2nd picture. If you can stand the sometimes mess of vines, they work well with dls too, giving some height and sometimes acting as a focal point. I use a lot of annual vines as well as several dozen clematis on my fenceline & on wall trellises and free-standing tuteurs. The zinnia picture has a short 3 ft one in the center of this otherwise rather low bed.

If you are doing the slats yourself, you could route channels for the cords to press into them. Or you could do a wider slat that would also hide the cord. Take a look at the EJ Audi / Stickley website for different slat configurations. One other thing that you could do is have a panel painted the wall color inserted behind the slats and let the cords fall where they may.

Outside, I enjoy those books too--- my late FIL went to school with Ferrol Sams and we love his novels. I hadn't realized he wrote essays as well. "When attending art shows, I swear off coffee table books but I am weak." We share that weakness, lol. Seems I am "always" never going to buy another huge book... Beagles, that room is fantastic, and I do see your pile of books peeking out from under that chair to the left :-) I'm with you on the kindle, but every now and then I like to hold a real book. Even though I find myself pushing the edge of the page instead of turning it (hanging head). No screen can reproduce the heft and color of those prints in large books, there is something about a good quality art print that is somehow more convincing than an image on a screen. Sloe gin, over the past decade or so I've seen many people putting lovely shelving in their dining rooms to combine functions or simply bring books into a room that doesn't often see them. I love that look, of a literary dining room! And your basket sounds eminently practical, we use our shagreen boxes and ceramic bowls for the same purpose--- the "stuff" has got to be corralled somehow. I have seen that Circus book, Robo, and the Atomic Ranch book also, they are both marvelous! It's clear that our collective enjoyment of these tomes is at least partly for the esthetic quality of the books themselves in addition to the content. I suppose that's what makes them "useful" decor :-) In some cases they might function purely as decor, as the leather books you've used, tinam. Have you seen the book purses that are so popular in some circles? Kate Spade has or had a few, and there's quite a cottage industry on Etsy making real old books into small handbags. They aren't a tenth big enough for me, but I love looking at them!

A couple of candleholders w/candles (alternates with a single large candleholder) a stack of magazines and catalogs to go through, my tablet, space to put up my sock feet at night when I'm reading or catching something on TV. Sometimes fresh flowers. I change stuff around a lot. And when the stack of magazines and catalogs starts getting too high, it's time for things to go to the recycle bin.