Dana ... wow! just speechless. Hats off to you girl. You two could be long-lost sisters!

I can't wait to see what you do this year! Should just get better and better with age as all the plants mature with growth and blooms! Really lovely, Dana!

Angele - LOL! Maybe separated at birth? LOL!

to bad i was the one that ended up in ky

wow! some beautiful gardens on here!!!

Becky, I completely agree with you on the 'white fence' in the garden idea.... I have redwood stained and hubby wouldnt let me paint em ... Now, if the freeway soundwall could be painted I'm sure he'd let me do that LOL! I went against the state 'laws' and painted THAT wall with trumpet vines! teehee!

Im still on the wrong puter, so dont have all my pix here.... This pix was when I first started gardening in 08. Those trumpet vines now cover most of that ugly wall! I also get lots of hummers visiting the flowers

AnjL - I remember that huge sound barrier wall. I bet it looks stunning now covered in vines and what a bonus to have so many hummers coming because of their #1 favorite nectar plant! I would be totally delighted to have so many hummingbirds! I bet you get lots of butterflies, too! Sounds just wonderful. Do you have any photos to share of the pond you and your dh built! That whole garden/pond area that you created in your backyard was incredible! It really inspired a lot of folks, AnjL! I look forward to seeing more from then and hopefully some now shots as you have the opportunity to get in there and get it all cleaned up and replanted. I know it's going to be a piece of garden heaven once again! :-)

Thanks for sharing and delighting me and others here! Such a joy to view! You and Dana both have done an incredible job of creating a unique slice of paradise in your yards!

i would love to have that wall instead of nosy neighbors. i love the trumpet creeper... one popped up here... you can see it barely in the last pic. any way its in a pretty small area... so i was like who was the -blank- who put that there! although i love them it was popping up everywhere. so for like a year i was cussing the person who planted that. then when i was planting some blazing star, i was down on my hands and knees and i happened to look over and see a ribbon that i tied to the original cutting, and i was shocked ...i planted that there! the first month or so that we moved in i had gotten a bunch of those boxed cuttings from lowes. it had been erased from my mind, i guess because i had no intention of gardening at the time. of course now i love it and dont mind the runners. its actually more controlled if i let it take over the fence, once its cut back a bunch it seems to make more runners.

Dana - LOL! Sounds like something I would do ... plant it and forget it!

I am interested to see AnjL's wall now. Can you imagine a wall of Trumpet Creeper vines and hummers all over it??? Oh yeah! I sure could! I love those little birdies!

I have a trumpet creeper in a pot. I put it in the ground originally and then read how invasive they are, so 2 months later I dug it up and put it in the large pot. Do you know I couldn't completely get all the roots/tubers when I dug it up and for 2 years I was pulling up runners! Ugh! I even dug down 4 feet and still couldn't get it all. I didn't see it last year, but it could be tunneling under my house trying to find my second born son or my baby (NOT!) daughter! LOL! Here in FL climate they grow like Kudzu! Yikes!

LOL your trumpet vines there sound like the 'morning glories' here! I wanted morning glories and tried for years to start them by seed...they would never grow. Finally 3 yrs ago they grew! and grew, and grew, and sprouted everywhere and choked out everything! ugh! You dont know how many hours my DH and I spent unwinding vines from all the other plants in my garden LOLOL! I really am crossing my fingers and hoping there are no more out there this spring.

My trumpet vines (we planted 3 of them) are in an 18inch by 50 foot long 'planter' bed that my DH built years ago when the state erected the lovely cement wall. Its made of cement sides, a baserock foundation and a wood capped top that we can use as a seating area. I'll see if I have a pix of it.

That pix is of the wall May 2008.

I ran outside just now and took a 'today' pix just for you Becky LOL! Those are my 6 foot tall butterfly bushes (I chopped them to 2 ft in the fall-they wont stop growing!) that are blocking most of my view from the upper level, but you get the idea of what that wall looks like today I like this view MUCH better! LOL!

AnjL - OMG!!! Will you look at those vines! That is amazing! And your butterfly bushes too! WOWEE!!! I love it! What a view! Who would've ever thought that hideous wall would turn out to be such an amazing structure for the Trumpet vines to climb! I looked at the 2008 photo and saw the trunks on those vines and about fainted! Holy cow, girl! They would not only be invasive here ... but they would probably lift my house off it's foundation and attack the neighbors screened pool enclosure and continue on forever from there! LOL!

But in your yard, they have served a wonderful purpose ... AND they attract hummers! How awesome!!!!! Thanks for taking the photo today! I wouldn't have believed it, if I hadn't seen your photo! That is sooooo cooool!

beckygardener said: Holy cow, girl! They would not only be invasive here ... but they would probably lift my house off it's foundation and attack the neighbors screened pool enclosure and continue on forever from there! LOL!

I have one on the far right that is stil scraggly looking, hoping that if I chop it back it will fill in better on its way up the wall. Maybe at the very least it will grow runners that will grow up under the fence line and choke my meanie old neighbor on that side

You're too funny, AnjL!

I am sittin here at my other puter, the one with more pix on it....and now I cant remember which pix you asked for, I know with the time difference your hopefully sleeping by now.

Anyhow, here is the patio I made last year for in front of our gym/shed. Unfortunately this area is covered in weeds now. I am determined to reclaim it because it was one of the last projects I was able to complete before the health really went sour. I WILL get it back and get it planted! someday... LOL

anjl could you post that in my pathway forum in the concrete cubit? someone is looking for a pic of that type of thing... i remember on dg when you made that!

Anjl - My way of weeding my country paver patio is taking the weed whacker and whacking the patio really good! Works like a charm. Some of the weeds still come back, but I can cut them again in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately, weed seeds get blown around and no matter how much weed pulling I do, they sprout anew. So it is an endless battle. The only thing that would stop them is if I poured concrete inbetween the pavers and that would destroy the country look. So the weed whacker is my favorite garden tool right now! :-)

BTW - I love that patio area. I don't remember seeing it before. Do you have photos of your front yard and closer photos of the arbors you dh made you! I just loved them. And your pond from after you built it! All beautiful areas of your yard and showcase structures!

I like the weed wacker idea :o) I think we're going to do that and then GULP douse the area with roundup. The problem here is we get the stinging nettle weeds that seem to grow 4 ft tall in a week. and then after they are torn out we get those weeds with the tiny hard 'poinker balls' that get stuck in my puppy's paws.

Someone on DG told me if you get rid of the roots (roundup) and then put corn glucose down, the seeds wont sprout again. I've yet to try that, but seems it might be worth a go.

I'm now back on the laptop, but I did put a pix of the Arbor on my Wood Craft cubit last night. There werent any good pictures of the pond or front yard on the main computer so I'll have to browse through that hard drive and find all those LOL!

Dana, If I can get on the main computer, I'll go post that pix on your thread

i know what you mean about having pics on different computers im always running back and forth. youd think id copy them but i never think about it

I did!
We have 8 laptops and 6 or 7 PCs, so trying to remember what photo was downloaded on which computer was getting horrible! Add to that the fact that I am a compulsive shutterbug and I cant seem to delete any photo, ever...and well it was a mess! I decided to buy the hard drive and store them all on there, so that I could easily just plug the hard drive into whatever computer I was on and load up whatever pix....

The problem now is... there are thousands and thousands of unnamed pix on that hard drive and not organized! I'll really have to make time to organize them all, and soon! LOL! i think I just created a bigger mess when I put them all on there

I think many people who take lots of photos find themselves in the same predictament. I try to spend some time once a month sorting through recent photos and copying to an external hard drive. I file them in folders by date and topic - such as date/garden photos or date/pets or date/family. If I don't, it becomes overwhelming. And I am already two months behind ... yikes! I can't imagine having to go through thousands of photos. One thing I do is delete photos that are lousy or duplicate shots. If it's not a photo that I like ... I hit delete. That helps cut down on the number of photos to keep track of .. Good luck, ladies! You have my sympathy of the task that lays ahead for you if you decide to get your photos organized.