Received my box today and even though the box had a large hole in it I still have lots to plant. So much for the postal service. Thank you so very much for all your work on this swap. Have a great gardening year everyone! Ellie

Outdoor dreams??? Well, let's start with the 200,000 dollar + dream backyard/oasis. In ground pool, diving rock, grotto, lazy river, hot tub, etc with the beautifully landscaped yard surrounding it with raised gardens, accent lighting and the gardener/pool boy to maintain it all. More realistic (not NECESSARILY requiring a huge lottery win) would be replacing the chain link fence with a privacy fence for the backyard (8,000-10,0000) and finish having the driveway poured. Our current driveway is mostly gravel with only a small portion of it concrete. We sit on a corner lot and our property is higher than the roads. Our driveway curves from one road to the other, I.e. very long, and expensive to pour. Since our driveway is uphill from all directions, during the winter there are times we can't get up our driveway. Once we reach the concrete, we have the traction to reach the house. The issue is literally timing and gunning the engine at the entrance to the driveway at just the right moment in order to make it from the road to the concrete. I'm hoping that in the next year or two that we can at least finish the concrete to the road on the garage side entrance so we don't have to leave our vehicles in the snow drift on the road and hike to the house. Did I mention that my new stove and fridge are coming on Friday? I will post a picture when they arrive. I'm so excited to finally have new appliances (a first for me) AND they are what I wanted and picked out!!

Lol Ingrid. I didn't take any of that into consideration, but don't ask me why. The 'thing' on the end(left)is a rooster made out of twigs and dried 'weeds'. The 'orange' is a little lemon tree, and the greenery in the vases are spheres of dried green leaves. The vases were empty for years, so the spheres are relatively recent. The dishes(Fitz and Floyd)i've had for years and have actually never been used. When I made the move to Tx, I though they would determine the colors for decorating, but the 'house' wasn't having any of that. They work as an accent, but too much color for me is unsettling~i'm more of a neutral kind of gal. Some things just *are*, like my never being a minimalist since I like to surround myself with a variety of things which for one reason or another bring comfort to me. I also feel they bring a coziness into a larger home, which sometimes is not an easy task. Yes, thankfully we get to do our own thing, but it's nice to get an outside opinion and take it into consideration, not something I do very often. As i've gotten older i've become very set in my 'ways' and really don't want to become one of those *inflexable* older people stuck in a rut. Change is always good, as long as it doesn't hurt!

Hey there, I see your tree is looking better. Im in SD county, I grow multiple avocado cultivars, and I grew up in an area known for commercial avocado crops. Your tree is fine, no worries. Normal leaf drop before the spring/summer flush of new leaves looks just like this. Your planting technique gets full marks with the mounding etc. Avocados have a network of shallow roots that do a lot of their moisture acquisition and LOVE a thick layer of leaf mulch to keep their soil moist but not wet (rot). So I would not get rid of its leaves, just let them compost at its base. Here inland SD, we have a majority soil composition of decomposed granite. When mulched, the DG is great avocado/citrus media, if not mulched...concrete. -s