Hi my friends, thank you so much for comments! They made me really proud and happy :o) I would really want to have all of you here, and enjoy togheter the garden. Somethimes I feel like I'm alone, in the very middle of the desert. People come here, take a distract look and start comment about the olive trees ("they are too high, you must to prune them... or you'll never been able to pick the olives") or, in front of my 7x7' 'Odorata', about all that "old wood on your roses... if you cut them hard, they will flourish with new basal shoots..." ... and more, lookin' at that 'Mme Alfred Carrière' eating the pergola and covered in gorgeous blooms... "those leaves are rather pale... the stems are very short and the flowers nod: have you fertilized her?" ... And what about all these erbaceous "weeds" covering the earth?...! I enjoy the moment when a real garden lover knock at my garden's door... or look at his pictures ;o) So, let's continue... Bearded Irises and Roses, the best companions ever: 'Iris 'Bonnie Davenport' and Rosa 'Odorata', with Rhynchelythrum repens (Red Natal Grass) in the foreground: More 'Mlle F. Krueger' and Vitex in late June Daylilies are good plants for the dry garden in early summer, just after the first, main flowering flush of roses in April-May. Hemerocallis 'Loving Memories' with 'Blue Spire' Perovskias. Ciao! Maurizio

Thanks, everyone - That last picture of the first time I ever wintersowed was exciting but confusing because i didn't label each clump (thinking I could remember what was what) and now I really know better and wintersowing has taught me (through experience) how to identify certain seedlings... clarejoe - Morning sun/afternoon shade - but I think Penstemon really likes full sun, but had no choice that year. Now mine are in complete full sun and this year I am waiting for Mystica to bloom for the first time.. Yay! Carrie

For those that see the little face try this its kinda neat. The original picture i took which is the smaller picture was uploaded to photo bucket the size is 320x 240 . When uploaded to forum i enlarge from 320x240 to 640 x 480 as you can see everything looks normal (no face). Now for those interested try to follow me . Put your mouse over the SMALLER picture and copy and paste to hardrive and then enlarge the picture the face is still there and distorts as expected but still there mostly. Now try this, copy and paste to hardrive the large picture and you need adobe photoshop or some other hardware to shrink picture as you do this you can see the face appear. I dont know a lot about how all this picture stuff works, but it perks my curiosity as to why the face does not show in the larger picture when enlarged in photobucket and uploaded to forum. But when the larger picture is shrunk down the picture starts to appear on ones hardrive. Anyways in keeping with forum policy and talking about fig trees it did go thru its coldest dormant winter in garage and when i recently looked at it it looks ok as i peeked under the old bedsheet its covered with. Cant wait till spring.

What a little sweetheart. She has such pretty dark eyes. Leslie