I'm happy for you and your much needed rain, Jan. We received way too much rain in our long, drawn-out cold Spring, that the conditions slowed my bloom season drastically! I'm sure enjoying all the blooms from south of us, while waiting for mine to put on a show...only a few blooming here right now. Willie Lyles is one of my favorites. I have a couple young plants, and am eager to see a clump of blooms! Malaysian Marketplace was on my wish list last year, but I wasn't able to purchase it, soooooo, back on the list it goes...must have it...someday. Great photography, and thanks for sharing. Julie

This past summer I used a variety of creeping red fescue ( a native species to our area). This was a mono stand. I fertilized it lightly in early spring and it stayed dark green all season and grew fairly vigorously. I did not water it regularly. In fact I stopped watering altogether when the temps got into the 90's and 100's because at that point I feel like it's futile and I don't like to be outside in that even at night so to sum it up at the end of the season the grass looked great still. The color was excellent and there were no bare patches or any significant loss. Even the this side yard does get some shade, what impressed me with it is that it looked beautiful by my standards the entire time. I don't like to have to apply fertilizer. That is one thing I really was trying to get away from because I have pets but also because it's a pain. The low nutritional needs and the fact that fine fescue is pH adaptable makes it a good choice for me. And although I had to mow throughout the summer, it wasn't too bad. It looks quite nice when it's long. So as you can see I really am not a fan of high maintenance. I detest having to do yard work when weather is miserable. For me it just makes sense to use a cool season grass that is growing most actively when the weather is tolerable. I don't like doing all the soil tests and all that either. Yet I still demand it be beautiful and lush. Oh and I don't want to pay a fortune for it. This year I'm experiementing with a blend that can tolerate being sprayed with roundup to see if I can control encroaching bermuda.

Jeff, I don't usually divide chamomile since it reseeds so easily. I will cut it back really, really hard once it is about through with a flush of flowering and it will then regrow and reflower. The method used to propagate chamomile depends oh which type you are growing. If it is English Chamomile, you can propagate it via seeds, division or by layering. If it is German Chamomile, you usually propagate it by seed only. I treat dill the same way as chamomile, cutting it back hard if I want to keep it growing and in flower, or let it go to seed if I want the seeds for cooking. I have never heard of anyone propagating it via division or cuttings, only by seed. Sage is easy to grow from cuttings. I have never tried to divide it from the rootball and don't know if that is how it is usually done. But, if you see clumps forming away from the main clump you can dig the little clumps up, separate them from the mother clump and replant them. Cut back the topgrowth of the divisions a little to compensate for the shock of being dug and transplanted. You can divide many perennial plants by cutting the rootball in half, but you will always have to cut back the top a lot to compensate for the digging/cutting/replanting. I usually just let the herbs grow into huge monsters. I tend to let them reseed, and then I just dig up the tiny seedlings and put them where I want them. In a rainy year, I will cut back herbs many, many times. Dawn

Once I learned how to make a roux in the microwave, I stopped doing it on the stovetop. You CAN burn it in the microwave if you don't pay attention, but the microwave process tends to be more forgiving. Here's how I do it: Before starting the roux, get all your vegetables cut up--celery, onion, green pepper. Have them ready, because you'll be using them to 'quench' the roux and stop the cooking. Take a large Pyrex glass measuring cup (say, 8 cups)--it needs to be about 3 or 4 times bigger than the volume of roux you're making. So if you're making a roux of 1 cup of oil and 1 cup of flour, an 8 cup measure is ideal. The timings I indicate are based on a roux of roughly 1 cup each of flour and oil, but you need to see how much energy your microwave has; a powerful microwave will, of course, cook things faster, so be on the lookout. And smaller amounts cook faster than larger amounts. In the glass measure, mix roughly equal parts of flour and vegetable oil (I use peanut). Place it uncovered in the microwave, and microwave on HIGH for 2 or 3 minutes. It'll bubble and foam. (What you're doing is driving off the water molecules which are attached to the starch molecules.) Remove the measure, stir up with a fork, and return to the microwave and nuke for a minute. Once it stops foaming, then you need to pay close attention to the degree of browning going on. Remove it, mix it up again. As it starts to brown, cut back on the period that you nuke it--so you may be nuking it for periods of 3 minutes to start, then one minute for a time or two or three, then thirty seconds, then 20 seconds, 10 seconds, etc. until you reach the desired level of brown-ness. Then, when it's as brown as you want it, remove the measure from the microwave and dump a good amount of the veggies in the roux. BE CAREFUL: it will release ungodly amounts of steam, and watch out for spatters; they don't call that stuff 'Cajun Napalm' for nothing. At this point, the coldness of the veggies (and the water content of the veggies) arrests the browning and it'll never get any browner. Mix up well, then add more veggies to get them coated. Add some stock to loosen it all up and tranfer the mixture to the gumbo pot. I never bother being really precise with the amount of oil simply because about 10 minutes before the gumbo is finished I use a ladle and degrease the whole mess. (If you're cooking a gumbo with sausage, it will release a good amount of oil as well, so you need to do that degreasing step anyway. Oh, and don't bother making gumbo with one of those low-fat turkey sausages. It'll taste like hot dogs. If you're not going to use good sausage like andouille or good kielbasa, you're better off omitting the sausage, IMHO.)