it seems.. that your only problem.. is that you want it all done yesterday ... how about his ... TAKE A WEEK OFF ... drag your lawnchair around ... with an adult beverage of your choice ... and decide where you need to go in the future ... what bed to make this fall.. so you wont have to do it in spring ... what plants need to be moved in fall ... gardening does NOT have to be all about hard work .. take some time to enjoy and plan ... and when your butt starts getting motivated again.. go at it a bit slower ... work smart.. not hard ... trying to do.. too much.. all at once.. can very easily become overwhelming ... take timeouts.. to enjoy that which has been accomplished.. sooner or later ... you will get itchy to get back out there .. and if you did nothing more this season ... so be it.. you have already done a great amount ... relish your accomplishments.. rather than fester in your expectations of failure .... the ONLY person you have allegedly let down is you .. i am positive everyone else is mystified with what you have accomplished ... declare the garden job done.. and find some other excuse to avoid housecleaning ... lol .. how about residing the house while you are at it ... maybe a new roof ... maybe a garden on the roof??? .. so many options to avoid housework ... good luck ken ps: time to join a garden club.. and go visit other local gardens .... for more inspiration ...

Wow, bejoy2, I'm sorry I missed you too, I'm not sure how we did but as another poster said, maybe we need name tags or labels. I had no idea how the plant swap is done, so I was pretty shy and wasn't sure who to introduce myself to. We wandered around for maybe an hour and a half, visiting with people and trying to get them to take our cookies. We were given so many plants that I'm not sure we could have fit much more in the car! Ok, that's not really true, I would have kept them in my lap if I had to. (grin) I was soaking wet anyway. Thanks for thinking of me, and offering to save things for me! I am so grateful for everyone's generosity and I hope the lilacs are useful to someone. We will bring more next time, and more sweets or something healthy even. I was sorry the humidity was so hard on the cookies! I hope they didn't get too limp. I have lots of things that I do remember the names of, and lots that I don't. Do any of you have ideas for how to deal with that? Like a grease pencil or something that will will write on pots in pouring rain & not wash off for a long time? Or a way to make tags on the spot? What pens do you like? What labeling devices? It seems like a grease pencil & plastic bags might have worked for all the stuff not in pots, but we would have needed an awful lot of bags, and it would be a shame to waste them. Maybe the stick-type labels, & rubber bands? Any thoughts? Thanks again. Laura

In managing most businesses, if the manager doesn't pay the employees, they don't continue coming to work very long. Each of us above being a toddler has a business that we run on the side. Nice part is, our employees don't charge for their work. As a matter of fact, they pay us! Each of those employees is called a Dollar (if you're in the U.S., it's a Bill; in Canada, a Coin, which we call a "Loonie"). If a kid sends that dollar out to buy ice cream it works for him/her once - and s/he can enjoy the "fruits" of the employee's work. Same for Mom and Dad regarding food, rent, clothing (unless they live in a much warmer climate than in this area - Buffalo had over a foot of snow, yesterday!). For many people in this part of the world, a car is pretty well in the category of "necessity", as well, as we have pretty well organized society around the car: many built-up areas no longer have sidewalks. If one finds ways to hang on to some of those dollars, they'll work for that person as long as s/he hangs on to them, with one exception - if they stick them into the mattress. Banks like to tout their guarantee that when we leave money with them, they'll pay rent on it, and guarantee to pay back every dollar that we lent them. They never mention the other guarantee - that, apart from the rent on the loan, they won't pay us one dollar more, either. But, there's a problem: I say that, when we invest our dollars where we are guaranteed to get each back, that their number can't grow, either. And the value of each declines each year that we own it. I say that there's two rats that eat your cheese: the income tax people want to talk to you each year about all of your earnings in that year. And they want some of it, of course. In Canada, they quite different rates of tax on varying kinds of income. If, apart from the rent, the number of your invested dollars can't grow, you need to add some of those invested dollars to the asset each year so that your purchasing poweer doesn't shrink as the value of each of those dollars of your asset shrinks. That rat's called "inflation" and it has eroded the value of each of your saved dollars every year - since the 1930s. With the rates of interest that borrowers are willing to pay these days, when we take out some for tax, and more to add to the saved dollars, each of which will buy less each year, often times there isn't any left. Know what? The rats eat first! If there's any left, you get that. Recently, there's none left. Imagine - the bank (as borrower) makes more on your money than you do, quite a bit of the time! As a matter of fact, every borrower, whether bank, corporation or individual figures that s/he can make more on the borrowed money than it costs him/her ... or they wouldn't borrow, would they? Suppose you'd put $10,000. into the bank 15 years ago, on a 5-year certificate, and renewed it twice since. Now, when you receive that money (apart from the rent) they'll pay you precisely what they borrowed - $10,000. That $10,000. would have bought a decent car, 15 years ago. Not now: inflation cut its value substantially through those years. Did inflation hurt the bank? No, they rented that money out to someone else (actually, usually about 8 "someone"s), at a higher fee than they paid you. Suppose I borrowed that $10,000., 15 years ago, agreeing to pay the bank the interest only monthly, and did that. How much would I owe the bank now? Right - exactly $10,000.00. Which will buy a great deal less now than it would then. So I gained from inflation: the guy who put his money into the bank lost ... unless the interest covered it. Farmers like to stick one seed into the ground and have it grow into an ear of corn (maybe even a couple of ears). Similarly, I like to invest a substantial portion of my assets into situations where I expect them to grow, given a number of years - and mine go back varying lenths of time to about 40 years. Some grew nicely ... and several paid increasing amounts on the investment over the years. However, I haven't had to answer to the income tax people about that increase in value ... and won't, until I sell them (or die). Which gives me much of the benefit of the tax-deferral in the tax-deferred retirement accounts (but with far fewer restrictions). And when I cash them, I pay tax on the increase at half regular rate. Some didn't pay anything, or sporadically. Some of those assets grew in value, more than enough to cover the ongoing returns that they hadn't paid (and on which I'd have had to pay tax at the time). Some didn't pay ... and went down in value, into the bargain. As a wise person said, "You can't win 'em all!". An investment group of about 25 that has met monthly for around ten years, that I've attended for six or seven, calls those latter experiences "tuition". In the school of learning how to manage money more effectively. When did you last merit a free luch? Good wishes for learning how to make your income and assets work better for you than for the other guys. ole joyful P.S. Actually, many of us get a "free lunch" here at Gardenweb, and various other places - for we've learned a lot, and it hasn't cost us anything but time, and internet fees, that we pay anyway. Actually, a while ago, it cost the guys giving the advice - for one could read for free ... but the owners charged a fee for one to open his (her?) big fat yap. Quite an imposition for us former clergy! Wouldn't you agree? o j

I have one of those wonderful atomic clocks, with big numbers on it. Besides the time, it shows the date, the day of the week and the inside temperature. Being retired and living alone, I'd never know anything without that clock. I keep calenders around handy, and even have the little stick up ones in the vehicles for reference when I'm out and about. they said they hadn't even adjusted to the time change yet! tee hee hee...I've still got 2 clocks I need to set backward an hour yet. Sue