I love all of the pics! Ladydonna--I may have snow pics similar to yours by the end of the weekend. Rare but not unheard of here. Weatherman keeps threatening, but he usually fibs. Edward and Sue-- Yup... that's the kind of snow I go to the mountains to see! Wonderful to play in but I thank my stars that I don't have to live in it. Moved to the Pacific Northwest from Minnesota/Alaska 30 years ago. Wintertime never leaves me with the desire to go back. At least you don't have to feel guilty about not doing chores in the yard! Stay warm! Julie

Not quite sure what you mean by bulbs. Bearded irises have a rhizome at the base of the plant. from this rhizome, new ones grow, which will produce new leaf fans, and eventually new flower stalks. These can be divided and planted as seperate plants when the clum is big enough. Dutch iris grow from a bulb which is smaller than a daffodil bulb, fairly rounded and has a brown papery outer coat. Sometimes bearded irises produce a seedpod at the top of the bloom stalk. This is green, oval in shape and can vary in size from tiny, up to as big as 3" long. This may be empty or contain seeds. If you get one of these, and you haven't deliberately hand pollenated your flowers, then you have what is commonly called a bee pod, because, presumable the bees did the work of pollenating the flower. This will contain seeds from an unknown cross. These can be planted and grown to produce new plants, all of which will be genetically different from each other and both the parent plants. Hope that helps. Cheers, Jan in Australia

There's nothing wrong with SFG but I think some of Mel's spacing is a bit skimpy and I don't space corn, tomatoes and a few other things as closely as he does, although I tried them his way (and wasn't happy with the results). In our hot climate and long growing season, SFG plants can get overly crowded although the spacing probably works OK in cooler climates than ours where the plants often don't get as large. If you are going to grow corn using square foot gardening, accept that your plants (and the ears they produce) always will be smaller than those grown with wider spacing and plant a smallish variety like Dwarf Blue Jade or, as Larry mentioned, Early Sunglow--which is not a dwarf but was bred to be very compact. Square Foot Gardening works best only if you have really, really enriched the soil so if you don't feel like the soil is quite rich enough, feed the corn. Shekannah, As Scott mentioned, either late July or early August is the time to plant fall corn. You want your corn to mature after the daytime highs have dropped down out of the 90s. Corn that pollinates in high heat often has problems with sterile pollen and that, of course, results in poor kernel formation. You can plant just about any variety of sweet corn that you want. If you want to plant an heirloom variety, Country Gentleman is a shoepeg corn that has outstanding flavor, Texas Honey June (available from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange) has great flavor and very tight husks that help to keep the corn earworms out, and Black Mexican can be dual-harvested----harvest some at the milk stage for sweet corn and let the rest stay on the stalks until they dry and can be harvested to make corn meal. If you want to plant a sugary enhanced or triplesweet variety, they've all performed equally well here in our garden and I especially like the flavor of Serendipity. Merit is another hybrid that does vey well in our heat, and Silver Queen is a great white corn. Dawn

Nicole...My house is in a state of "on going repair". The three bedrooms are finished with white painted crown molding, baseboards, trim, new windows, and old painted doors. The original white oak floors were exposed, scraped and refinished. I love them. The living room will be tackled this spring. We're refinishing those white oak floors; I've been removing all the old plain oak trim as I wash and repair the walls. The LR and breakfast nook open to the kitchen and I'm having to treat them similar. I don't think I'll have any trim on the new LR windows; if there is it will be white. I have a handcrafted pine writing desk, but it's moving to the sewing room. I built a large pine bookcase 25 years ago; it lives in the den. The breakfast nook has a vintage bistro table with a cast iron base and a light maple top. Everything else in this room will be replaced. The table can be restained, or painted, or covered with a tablecloth. The walls will be some version of sage green, probably. The ceiling has just been painted white with a new ceiling fan and light fixtures. So, maybe I'll sand the cabinet and stain it walnut??? I'm going to have to think about it. I paid $115 for the cabinet. Not a $20 steal like some folks find, but considering our FreeCycle/Craig's List pickings are very slim here on the northern Great American Prairie, and what I would have paid for a press-board, plain, new, cabinet; I'm happy. The kitchen will probably have hickory cabinets; that's not set in stone though.