Melissa - glad you are with family, and that everything worked out well for your Christmas and DD's birthday. Sometimes I get sort of out of sorts in the Winter here lately, but it is because of TOO MUCH sun (b/c of our on-going drought), not a lack of it. In the wintertime, the sun is low in the sky, but that just means it seems that it is usually in my eyes - makes driving harder. My DH and I have not got children, but we have lots of extended family, all reasonably nearby, so we hosted a Christmas Eve party for 9 relatives and a couple who are good friends of ours, went to a 14 person (also all relatives) Christmas Day dinner nearby, and are looking forward to getting together with MY side of the family (9 more people) when they get back from skiing in the Sierras in the middle of Jan. The dinners were all at homes, and home cooked food, and it was so fun that there were 2 little kids at our house - we made stockings for them. To my astonishment, I found an art supply store in our town (which carries lovely greeting cards, which is why I was there), which had a huge display of well made small toys, etc. which were exactly what my DH and I used to get in our stockings in the mid 1950s! No electronics, let alone anything to do with the internet. The kids were enchanted, which is the point of everything, I think. We also had some bad weather lately - which made everyone ecstaticly happy! It rained 3 inches a few days ago, and they tell us that will start again tomorrow, for another 3 days. Where I live, most of our water supply is from reservoirs on our local mountain, so if it does not rain, we have a water crisis, which has been going on & on in recent years. In the storm a few days ago, when we got 3 inches of rain, that watershed got 6 inches (which is of course why they put the reservoirs there in the 19th century). Lots and lots of snow fell in the mountains, which is why 9 members of my family, who all ski, decided to spend Christmas up there. Wishing you and everyone on here a Happy New Year, whatever that means to you - Jackie

Marie, I love your Merry Bells. I just bought one of those and I’m looking forward to next year with it. It’s already past bloom right now and not in the ground yet. Sorry to hear about your Redbud. I had the same trouble with my Japanese Maple ‘Bloodgood’ this year for the first time. It has leafed out but a LOT of dead branches up there in the canopy. I’m going to try to keep it watered well this season which is not easy if we are not getting rain. How do you irrigate your garden? Love your Calycanthus. I added one a few years ago and it was small, it was still getting established and the rabbits ate it down to the ground over the winter. It has come back up and is about 8” high now, but I wonder what the point is if the rabbits will repeat that next year. Thanks for reminding us of Claire! The forum hasn’t been the same without her. I miss her ocean views and her birds, her kind thoughtful posts and her consistent participation. Deanna, Your Sagae looks great, compared to mine, that the rabbits have nibbled around a number of the leaves. Is ‘Blue Moon’ a woodland Phlox or Phlox paniculata? Poor Azalea! I feel like that is going to be my story with the rabbits and my Calycanthus. That ‘pot ghetto’ doesn’t look so bad. I had mine down to zero last year, but I’ve done a lot of transplanting and moving around this spring and I have one started again. Soon to have a LOT more added to it. [g] I’m so sorry that you are having trouble with posting to Houzz. Not in the least surprising, but sad, because there seems to be no hope of them straightening themselves out to offer a better experience. I continue to think they are short staffed and I won’t be surprised if we go to post one day and it doesn’t exist any more. I seem to be able to post and post photos without any issues. It’s only when I need to do a search of the forums that I start getting frustrated. Or try to use the messaging function. And my notifications on comments is hit or miss. But I use my laptop - an Apple. I know some people use a tablet. If you have one, it might work to post from there. I haven’t been posting in part because I’ve been too busy. I was able to hire someone to help in the garden and I have been able to tackle some projects that have been on the back burner for awhile. And I’ve been ripping apart some of my beds, so they haven’t really been great for photos. We are also in the process of getting some of our fencing replaced and I’m going to need to move a LOT of plants that will be in the way, that I don’t want to get trampled in the process. Which is not a bad thing, because it is along a border that needs a complete renovation any way. I’m almost finished with my front bed, except for a new vegetable area that I’m stuck on. I have to do something to protect it from rabbits and the ideas I had to do that are just not working out. But something will work out, it’s just time consuming and not the fun part of gardening. In the mean time I have opted to grow more vegetables in containers this year. My raised beds in the back are just not doing the job any more. Not enough sun, tree roots, and 9 year old wooden beds. That’s about it from here. I would take a few photos but it’s very windy here today. A nice breeze to sit out and enjoy the day but not great for photos. I’ll take some and start a June thread this week. Hope everyone is enjoying the Memorial Day weekend!!

Jumping outside between the showers it looks like the peas have 1-2 more pickings before they're exhausted. 2 plantings of late corn will replace them along the trellis. The broccoli is also kaput now, and will compost their remains tomorrow. The remaining 4 purple cabbages are very close to harvest so that row will become free for some back-up watermelon plants. Looking a late season for melons this year. The squash is blooming now and the cukes are just starting to produce both male & female buds. The sweet potatoes are showing the beginnings of vines and the 2nd corn is 3" high now as the 1st corn hits the 18" mark. The bush beans are now blooming so we'll switch from shelling peas to snapping beans soon. The asst cantaloupes (Ambrosia, Sugar Cube, Honeydew, & Crenshaw) are faring better than the watermelons at this point but each are still in the pre-vining stage. The tomatoes are setting nicely and the peppers are starting to bloom as the 1 eggplant gets its act together. All Lettuces are still sweet too....can you tell it's still raining outside? ;-)

For the longest time, I pretty much operated a gardening free-for-all...which was insanely labour extensive, frequently on the verge of chaos, shunned by family and friends. I made absolutely no concession to age, agility, maintenance demands, space, climate....and as I especially enjoy raising my own plants from seed, you do tend to end up with quite a lot Unsurprisingly, it all got a bit out of hand. I would have had to think quite hard to come up with lessons I had learned (none). Anyway, after a season of falling over more than usual (tripping over tangling vines and dodgy edging boards), as well as being lashed by vicious thorny briars, I bought a sort of mini-chainsaw pruner and set about editing. I have (mostly) got the roses in hand (discovering parts of the plot I have not stepped for a decade) and grubbed out many of the ancient currants, And decided I was not going to be guilted into anymore manic vegetable growing (I am a reluctant cook), The biggest change though, has been to row back on my habit of growing far too many annual and biennial flowers, especially since I no longer have a raft of gratefully impressed customers and my offspring grow their own: I had to resort to planting the extras in the local cemetery and various public spaces. Pruning: As a terrible meddler, experimental pruning was the basis of much of my novice garden training. There is ALWAYS a load of this when you work as a jobbing gardener and growing large roses and a lot of fruit trees and bushes means the secateurs are always busy. However, the dilemma of pruning still confounds me since one of the very first dictums I learned at hort.school was 'growth follows the knife'...which it certainly does. Initially, chopping back the roses opened the plot up to a lot of light and space but the furious rose plants grew back with a vengeance...and all at exactly the height where they could inflict major damage to eyes. Prior to the great cutback, the most unpleasant surprise usually entailed a painful puncture on the top of my head, from some wayward branch but now it was turning into a bodyline massacre. Had no choice apart from the spade. I took cuttings of many of the removals but I am currently ignoring the numerous buckets of hardwood cuttings, all awaiting planting holes...somewhere. I grubbed out a lot of the fruits with a sigh of relief at no longer needing to spend many,many hours picking and preserving (there are jars of redcurrant and bramble jelly going back years in the larder). I have had the allotment for 20+ years and finally, I decided to attempt to build a garden rather than a random collection of plants...but have had a painful and confusing time deciding what sort of garden I want. Over the years, I have been a helpless dilettante, with shiny new enthusiasms every single season. I have grown (and killed) an unconscionable number of plants...and the plot still looked a mess. However, I have set a few ground rules and am replanting the old vegetable beds with plants which will need no irrigation (quite an ask, living in the dryest part of the UK). More important (to me) is an honest attempt to rediscover some sort of genius loci - a spririt of place, or a set of plants which are perfectly at home in the flat, open fenlands, growing in harmony with the resident fauna and weeds and wildflowers. It is still in it's early stage - I planted up 3 new beds this year - but I have a sort of guiding principle and am learning that restrictions and obstacles are more helpful than negative, making this undisciplined gardener make measured choices instead of random whims. This seems like a potentially more fruitful route to building a coherent, aesthetic and sustainable garden. Plus, the perennials I have been tenderly growing can finally be planted in spaces which have been prepared, considered and planned (and not the random plonking which characterised my garden (ahem) 'style'. Onwards and upwards. And on another topic altogether, I have been watching a series on BBC about American gardens. Sadly,it is helmed by the odious Monty Don and an unfortunate eurocentric (English, really) direction...while Don manages to be both obsequious to the great and good and hugely condescending to gardeners with less social and financial capital. But if you can get IPlayer, do check the series out. And grit your teeth (although Don seems bizarrely popular in the US). 'Monty Don's American Gardens'...just the title alone is enraging, but if I didn't let it put me off, I am sure you will manage to find something to enjoy.