The Guild 5-13-2003 Try some new Annuals in your garden

Better Homes and Gardens ^

[BigWaveBetty]

It's fun and challenging to grow new or exotic plants, but it's also nice to have some solid favorites to fall back on, too.

Mexican Sunflower
Include the late-blooming Mexican sunflower to shift the garden from summer through autumn in grand style. The bold plants, available in many nurseries and home and garden centers, grow almost 6 feet tall. Fiery orange, 2-inch blossoms seem to illuminate everything around them.

Heliotrope
Growing only about 18 inches tall, heliotrope is perfect for the front of the garden and grows best in full sun and well-drained soil. Consider growing heliotrope in a container or window box where it will be closer to your nose.

Snow on the Mountain
Like the closely-related poinsettia, snow on the mountain has "flowers" that actually are specialized leaves or bracts. The true flower is inconspicuous at the center of the variegated green-and-white bracts. Growing to 4 feet tall, snow on the mountain is well-suited to the middle of the garden.

Four o'clocks
If you have little time in your day to enjoy your garden, you will appreciate night bloomers such as four o'clocks. The bushy 3- to 4-foot-high plant will open its tubular 2-inch flowers in late afternoon to early evening, and fill the garden with sweet perfume. Each flower lasts but one night, but the plant blooms constantly from midsummer to frost. Flowers come in magenta, yellow, or white and in striped combinations.

Mexican Zinnia
The bushy Mexican zinnia is a welcome change from the typical zinnia that is gangly and prone to powdery mildew. Two outstanding varieties are "Orange Star" and "Star White." They grow about 10 inches high and spread to 12 inches wide. Their mounds of fine, almost needle-like leaves give rise to single, daisy-like blooms that resemble a demure coreopsis more than their larger double-flowered zinnia cousins.

Love-lies-bleeding
Also known as tassel flower, this is a guaranteed showstopper in any garden. No shrinking violet, it grows 3 x 5 feet tall, spreads up to 2 feet across, and bears long, red-to-crimson-purple flower tassels. If the size of the plant doesn't grab your attention, the 2-foot-long panicles of flowers that resemble chenille will.

More at the link. Happy digging!

[Iowa Granny]

Oh, helping your friend search for that dress will be so much fun.

I remember attending a Nat'l Federation of Republican Women's convention in Las Vegas about 10 years ago. I wasn't into gambling, so another gal and I went shopping. We tried on sequined dresses all evening. What fun. We walked away empty handed of course, but it was a fun filled night of entertainment.

[Carolina]

Andrew Sullivan on the Squid: OFF HIS MEDS AND IN THERAPY: St. Bill! In Sid’s Gospel (little Sid finds God in Bill)

Which reminds me what The Clinton Wars evoked for me. It has the tone and manner and piety of one of those "Lives of the Saints" books most Catholic school kids were once forced to read at some point or other. It’s not a memoir, or a history. It’s a Gospel. Its facts are assembled, as the facts in the Gospels were assembled, for one purpose only: to affirm the faith, to rally the flock, to spread the further glory of the Church. It’s an allegory of eternal good and evil—a passion narrative with a scriptural past and a resurrection at the end, the first-person narrative of one saint who prevailed.

Pure slime.

[lodwick]

Man - Sullivan can slice and dice with his words.

Thanks for bringing him here.

[Endeavor]

"I am grateful of the opportunity to support the British Red Cross’ vital HIV/AIDS work in Africa."

That's it Chels, butcher the language. What schools did you graduate from?

[mountaineer]

Remember how she wrote something to the effect that she had lost her "innocences" on Sept. 11? Oh please.

[Endeavor]

RE: "See the bridge to the 21st century" billboard - that "bridge" (looks more like a glorified house trailer to me) only spans a small waterway - it ends at the river's real path. That's pretty apt.

[Utah Girl]

That comment from Andrew Sullivan is spot on. That is exactly what is going on with the books coming out, and don't forget, Bill's is due out next summer, just in time for the elections.

[lodwick]

"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."- Ronald Reagan

"To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society" - Theodore Roosevelt

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul."- George Bernard Shaw

[lodwick]

[Utah Girl]

Good graphic of Mike Price. He coached at Weber State in the eighties (located in Ogden, Utah). He was a good guy, it was exciting to see him advance through the ranks. I'm really disgusted by his behavior "I was too drunk to remember what happened". Yikes.

[lodwick]

It's so incredibly STUPID - what he did. It is bad enough behavior, but to top it off with stupidity...I just cannot imagine it.

I hope his marriage is a solid as the 'toons or we'll soon enough be reading about the ex-Mrs. Price.

[lodwick]

Linda Bowles commited suicide.

Man oh man.

[Aggie Mama]

Good afternoon everyone. I've been in part-time lurker mode. I came down with a cold last weekend and still feel like crap. Unfortunately, DH caught it, so my work load has tripled around here. Why is it that when I'm sick no one takes care of me, but when he's sick, he gets to rest and be taken care of? *Sigh*

Anybody have link to how much the tax cut will affect each tax bracket? I sure would like to know if we will have some of our money back by summertime.

[Aggie Mama]

Who is Linda Bowles?

[lodwick]

Linda Bowles

[Iowa Granny]

I sure would like to know if we will have some of our money back by summertime

Don't count on it, Sweetie.

[Carolina]

*****BREAKING*****

BARBARA WALTERS WINS HILLARY INTERVIEW

[lodwick]

Finally - A Picture for Women!

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

It will be a softball interview. I hears that Diane Sawyer let go of the interview and that Oprah was going to be the first.

I don't care who is doing the interview. It will be soft and fluffy as to not humiliate the Crusty Beast.

[Utah Girl]

Barbara Walters??? Blech, I think Diane Sawyer would have been better. It will be a lovefest.