GREAT! your photos convince me that you don't need grass. i have a small plot of land like you; and I need to work on filling it out!! Keep the photos coming...here in MN; we are looking at SNOW again tonight. the tulips are saying - "we came out for this!!?"

LOL booberry85. April snow indeed. Here are some pics for your viewing pleasure. Hmmm, I wonder if the clematis will like the snow? Bearded Iris have stalks and not just in this bed but in all the beds. Daylilies are mostly covered with snow too. The lilac bush is in bloom if you can believe that but now a lump of bent over branches. Oranmental cherry trees are in full bloom but we shall see how they "dry" out after this. The huge pussy willow tree had its branches all the way to the ground this morning since the snow was so heavy. I'm so stressed right now. I think I'll put my energies into other things so I can take my mind off of the mess this weather has brought us.

Rural mail comes 5 weekdays, used to be about noon or slightly after, recently closer to ten a.m., very seldom get the wrong mail - once for the family next door, I just took it over to them. Drivers seldom miss - run in poorer weather than do school buses! Unions are losing their capability ... and it'll get worse as we have more workers than there are jobs, which has been occurring in recent years. When you have approximately 35% unemployment, as Korean refugees faced near the end of and after the Korean War (no one knew for sure) ... ... if you tried to get a union going, and threatened to withdraw labour if you didn't get better pay/working conditions ... ... you were told, "Go ahead ... all we have to do is start a rumour that we're hiring ... and we'll have to have a dozen desks just inside the gate, to take the names of hundreds/thousands of folks looking for work". Wait'll you find out what fun it is being without 'em. In some parts of our economy, they are crying the blues because they lack skilled workers ... so are poaching them from other countries, including some where the school system is very slim, and they need their own skilled workers. And when people with some skills get here, often their credentials are not accepted, so they can only get crummy jobs. Local people used to leave school early to get a decently-paying but semi-skilled job in a factory ... but many of them have evaporated around here (the jobs - not the people), having been shipped overseas. Corporations find borders a darned nuisance ... much simpler to have free trade, so one can have stuff made in a low-wage area, then shipped into a wealthier area, where the workers want more money, without the nuisances of tariffs in between. We need to wake up - the U.S. was once the world's largest banker/creditor. Plus made a lot of stuff to sell elsewhere ... and owned a lot of patents, that if people elsewhere wanted to use, they had to pay fees (well, most did). Also, they owned a lot of the means of production. Now, they're the world's largest debtor (or near it) and consumer stuff is coming in from China and other low-wage areas ... and the ships are returning empty. Along with buying the consumer stuff ... we need to be investing in the means of production, buying into the factories and businesses, so that those dollars go on paying us, over the long term. Living in recent years better than any people in the world ever did, we weren't content with that, our governments ran up huge debts (that out grandkids'll have to pay). And now are printing money, hand over fist, nor just to pay off the debt (with dollars that are worth less), but to pay current bills. The days of the U.S. Dollar being the wrold's reserve currency are numbered. Other countries are setting up different trading systems, not dealing with U.S. Dollars. Soon, when we take them to other countries, instead of people almost fighting to get them ... they'll look at them and say they don't want them ... that there's little that they can do with them. Like the folks who spent as they went, without making provision for their future, when they became disabled or retired. And with fewer pensions, and less generous ones, many are going to be hurting, down the road, when they don't have enough to live on. When there's talk of moving the normal age of retirement up a couple of years ... there's all kind of screaming. But once we retired at 65 ... and lived to about 70. Now, if we retire at 65, many of us will live to 80 ... or even 90 - maybe 100?. Big difference. Better to run out of life, before you run out of money... ...than the other way around. When I can buy a pair of reading glasses in the Dollar store for $1.00 (and 13 cents fed and prov. tax) ... there's gotta be some slave labour involved somewhere! ole joyful

We are still in a winter storm warning until this evening. While we have gotten over 30" in the southern part of the state and in the mountains (ski resorts) in my area it's more like 8-10" so far. Temps are hovering around the freezing mark and the snow is clinging to everything, looking very pretty. I haven't heard of any major power outages although once the snow starts dropping off the trees and the branches bounce back that will likely change. The road crews have been doing a great job as always keeping things clear. With DH away at work I've spent a wonderful day watching the storm, reading and not doing any housework. I hope all the New Englanders are making out alright. Please check in.