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!

[lodwick]

I heard that and promptly hit the Delete from memory key...thanks, I think, for reminding me.

Cheers.

[lodwick]

Has anyone seen, or read The Dancer Upstairs ?

Any reviews?

[lodwick]

A professor of mathematics sent a fax to his wife:

Dear Wife:

You must realize you are 54 years old and I have certain needs which you are no longer able to satisfy. I am otherwise happy with you as a wife. I sincerely hope you will not be hurt or offended to learn that, by the time you receive this letter, I will be at the Grand Hotel with my 18-year old teaching assistant. I'll be home before midnight.

Your Husband

When he arrived at the hotel, a faxed letter waited for him:

Dear Husband:

You, too, are 54 years old and by the time you receive this letter, I will be at the Breakwater Hotel with the 18-year old pool boy. Since you are a mathematician, you will appreciate that 18 goes into 54 more times than 54 goes into 18. Therefore, don't wait up.

Your Wife

[pubmom]

If Oprah can stand her, what the hay. She should not however, expect to hear the truth.

I wonder if she'll be permitted to make eye contact with the broom straddler?

[pubmom]

Thanks for the chuckle, a flu epidemic is working its way through my household this week, there's not much to laugh at while washing sheets and emptying buckets.

Hope you are well.

[mountaineer]

From the WashPost:

Former White House counselor Sidney Blumenthal's long-awaited [really??] memoir, "The Clinton Wars," is said to be picking up favorable reviews in coming weeks. It's what they call, in the P.R. biz, "an intimate portrait" of Blumenthal's key role in shaping the Clinton presidency. You can tell that just from the pictures. There are photographs of President Bill Clinton and Blumenthal on the front and back of the dust jacket.

In all, the book has 25 photos of people, and Blumenthal is in 18 of them, often dispensing wisdom to an attentive Clinton. (Clinton is seen without Blumenthal in a few photos, such as while giving the State of the Union address.) There's one picture of Blumenthal's empty White House office, which displays on the wall The Washington Post's front-page headline "Clinton Acquitted," and then, "above the picture, the President wrote: 'To Sid, Thanks, Bill Clinton.'"

[lodwick]

Sorry to hear that - is there anything much worse than the summer-type flu?

Good luck with it and stay well. You know the rules: Moms cannot get sick.

Cheers.

[Carolina]

Here's what RET (RE Tyrell) had to say about the Squid:

The Liars' Club

Now Blumenthal's book, you can be sure, will be full of lies and related deceptions. I have read some of it on the Web and can tell you that it reads like the kind of thing Baghdad Bob might write. Baghdad Bob had to cover for the misbehavior of his boss Saddam Hussein, and Blumenthal has to cover for the Clintons, but one might wonder why?

The Clintons are recognized liars. Most of the Clinton scandals Bill Clinton brought on himself. He committed the misbehavior and then he lied about it. No one made him lie before grand juries. But then no one made Blumenthal lie in public about his grand jury appearances. Lying is a way of life with these people. Lying was a way of life with Glass and the plagiarist at the New York Times. There appears not to be much shame attached to lying in the Great Republic. It is a minor transgression, on the order of bearing false witness against one's neighbor -- another of Blumenthal's transgressions.

At least, Baghdad Bob was entertaining. The Squid was all slime.

[pubmom]

Sid reminds me of the obnoxious yearbook editor from high school who put her own photo on almost every page.

The Clinton Presidency being what is was isn't much to be proud of. Can what Sid dispensed to BJ be even laughingly referred to as wisdom?

May the highlight of Sid's career be that his photo with the disgraced one is used to keep dirt and filth from the covers of his sickening writing. (The rest of the dirt and filth are between the front and back covers I'm sure. There isn't a dust jacket large enough to address that problem.)

Does anyone want to volunteer to read this one?

[Carolina]

Oh, dear! Take care and hope everyone's getting better.

[Teacup]

If Oprah can stand her,

I hope Hillary takes a bath, washes her hair and takes ole crusty to the cleaners. Other wise, Oprah won't be able to stand her.

As far as Chelsea goes....................Who knows what she's up too. She's been absent from the tabloids lately.

[pubmom]

Thank you! We need all the good wishes and prayers we can get.:)

[lodwick]

QUOTES & TOASTS of the DAY - Quotes

"I think that Clueless was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it is true lightness." – Alicia $ilverstone

"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and Stupidity" -- Albert Einstein

[mountaineer]

Perhaps Alicia has been learning her cluelessness from Rosie O'Donut.

[lodwick]

Is that an application for the Klingon translator in WA?

WTF.

Didn't she use to be semi-bearable, way back in the day?

[lodwick]

A customer was really hassling an airline agent at the ticket counter -- yelling and using foul language. However, the agent was polite, pleasant and smiled while the customer continued to abuse her.

When the man finally left, the next person in line said to the agent, "Does that happen often? I can't believe how nice you were to him."

The agent smiled and said, "No problem, I took care of it. He's going to Detroit. His bags are going to Bangkok."

[lodwick]

SEND THIS WARNING TO EVERYONE ON YOUR MAIL LIST.


IF A MAN COMES TO YOUR FRONT DOOR AND SAYS HE IS
CONDUCTING A SURVEY AND ASKS YOU TO SHOW HIM YOUR
BOOBS, DO NOT SHOW HIM YOUR BOOBS. THIS IS A SCAM. HE
ONLY WANTS TO SEE YOUR BOOBS.

I wish I'd gotten this
yesterday. I feel so stupid.

Signed, The Blonde

[Utah Girl]

LOL, you are on a roll today.

[lodwick]

Hope you had a chuckle or two - cheers out there.

[Teacup]

Fri May 9,11:52 AM ET A vehicle passes beneath a billboard on Interstate 30 in Little Rock, Ark.,that promotes the Clinton Presidential Library. The Clinton Presidential Library Foundation has erected 10 such billboards featuring an artist's rendition of the future downtown library, hoping to make Little Rock and its library complex an international tourist destination.

Is this for real??? OMG! How tacky.

About Alicia $ilverstone being Clueless. All I can say is, "A Mind is a terrible thing to waste."