Rain4nights' Outbox

The grand plan is to build a pergola onto the face of the 3-season room and put containers and climbing things everywhere! But it may take me some time to get enough containers together, we have an aversion to buying nice pots new because they're so pricey - even the plastic ones!.

That's what I love best about hydrangea, those subtle color changes. I know some people prefer them to be just pure blue (and feed them a lot of aluminum sulfate), but I like seeing the transitional colors.

I know, this is my first year growing tomatoes, so I have no idea how long they'll take to ripen. My husband keeps teasing: "Are they morsels yet?"

Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen an oblong tomato in person, just the pictures on the jars of spaghetti sauce

I didn't even know that lilacs could be trees! I've only ever seen lilacs as shrubs, but what a beautiful, rambling sort of tree it is!

I love that interpretation! A faerie wild-hunt perhaps? Magical and beautiful, yet sinister. In our area these plants are a ruinous invasive, clogging up our wetlands and crowding out native plants without benefiting local wildlife. And yet they can be so lovely in these wasted urban spaces where nothing else grows anyway.

Thanks! Refinishing the floors was a great move for us. It didn't take as long as we thought once we rented a large floor-sander. We used a hand-held orbital sander for the corners. And we finished with 3 coats of a water-based polyurethane. It really took off a lot of the weather damage near the balcony door in the room you see here. Next year I plan to put some cool potted plants on the balcony, maybe some trailing vines.

For shade, in addition to the previously mentioned hostas - ferns are lovely, and a beautiful romantic perennial called "Bleeding hearts" Dicentra Spectabilis was a favorite of my mother's and I intend to plant it at every house I ever own. The flowers look just like victorian stylized hearts.

Thanks! I got really great success with my dad's old manual film camera and hand-processed b&w film one winter. But eventually I had to give the camera back. Without photoshop, I can't get that same moody quality with my digital camera. And you can't control shutter speed on digitals unless you are willing to pay a hefty pricetag. Someday the price will come down, or I will make more money, and be willing to get an SLR type digital. Until then, my better photos are my older photos.

Coyote urine works to deter lots of animals. You can get it at your local feed-n-seed or whatever. I don't want to know how they obtain it. But it comes in a little bottle, you put it on cotton balls and put the cotton balls where ever you most want to keep them away. My step-mom used it to great effect to keep raccoons from hanging around her back door (previous homeowners used to feed them like pets).