I so appreciate this thread! And Chris, I can almost picture your place - must be lovely! Would really enjoy seeing your photos. . . My little plot of earth is really a series of rolling hills, a couple of acres with a small creek on one side, pine trees at one end and bamboo at the other. It is quite challenging, since it had not been tended for many years and not much of it is flat. When I moved here 6 years ago I began manually clearing patches here and there, and creating various beds where my great-aunt used to garden, but it is still high maintenance. So far there are terraced blueberry beds, 3 vegetable beds (one fenced since I have seen deer as well), small herb beds and the perennial beds that line the main path. This year I will finish the center bed with a bird bath and butterfly garden. The slope is pretty steep in some places, and there is still much work to be done. I would love to create a rock path leading down from one level to the next. . . Every time my grown daughters come up for a visit, I try to finagle a "work day" out of them. LOL It really is too much for one person, but gardening is a passion and it keeps me out of trouble (somewhat). Winter-sowing has been a lifesaver, since I can have numerous plants for very little expense. I continue to experiment with various irises, salvias, agastache, monarda, coneflowers, penstemon, cosmos, a couple of antique roses, many herbs and day lilies. There are also wild plants: Joe Pye weed, butterfly weed, passion flower, Queen Anne's lace, day lilies, daffodils, and even irises and roses(Some of these were obviously planted many years ago by my great-aunt). I have searched the GW forums and have found many beautiful hillside garden pics that continue to provide inspiration. Good luck to all of you with challenging inclines, and please keep posting photos! :P Rosemary

Yes, and they seed about enthusiastically, and even seedlings are very hard to pull out--you have to dig them.

P-pal - I didn't really notice a fragrance. But I must have a not-so-sensitive nose because I don't detect scent on a lot of the small ones. Although I must say that my australis ssp. tenuipes is blooming up a storm right now and I smell that one from three rooms away!! Mike, I think you're right. Because this is one I've had a lot of trouble with, I put it in a spot where I don't look at it often and thus it doesn't get watered quite as frequently as others. So I think it does prefer to dry out. That's what it takes, sometimes, with those types for me. Frustration turns into ignoring, which works for the ones that prefer to be dry... Denise in Omaha

Thanks! Good words of advice. halfdecaf - I love that you repeat your vows on your anniversary. That sounds like a very worthwhile tradition and one I might copy for us. I know the "good cop/bad cop" role is pretty tricky. It's not really how we intended it, but it's how I feel usually. My BF's own father abandoned the family when BF was at a very young age and his mother essentially detached from the family as a result of her husband leaving. As such, BF had no healthy parenting images to look up to so he leans toward parenting out of guilt or giving in too much to his own son. I come from a fairly strict, but caring, family so I've tried to share my own parenting examples with them. The result is that BF's son now has a normal bedtime (when we met he would let his son stay up until midnight! And he was 5!), he cleans up his own plate after dinner, he's not allowed to throw things or act physically in anger, he's not allowed to hit his dad or be disrespectful to us without consequences, etc. So I feel like the "bad cop" because I implement/encourage a lot of the discipline and a lot of the rules about what's acceptable and what's not. The only reason it's working is b/c BF currently backs me up on the decisions and is actually a little grateful that I know a little more than he does about general parenting, while he knows more than I do about his son's specific needs. So I think we make a good team. Of course, if either one of us ever stops supporting the other, I can see how that might cause some mutiny... We are also considering premarital couseling. One of my biggest challenges is learning to bite my tongue and not constantly tell him what to do. I was single for too long and have lots of rules in my own head about the way things "should" be done. On the flip side, he was single too long with a young son - essentially living the bachelor life with a kid tagging along (have you seen the Adam Sandler movie, Big Daddy - something along those lines, but not as extreme). So figuring out when my comments cross over into "nagging" seems to be a fine line. I never want to be the "nagging" wife.