WOW! What beautiful pictures! Thanks everybody for sharing them. I was caught up in the fun of this, thinking of what rose flower I liked best, when I had a thought - most of the responses and pictures here focus on the beauty of the individual blooms. This is understandable, but it is also how 20th century hybridizers thought, and unfortunately it resulted in the development of: spindly upright ugly bushes; new roses with no fragrance whatever; & roses so disease prone that everybody had to spray poisons all over their gardens every 2 weeks! So, I would prefer a different definition of "beauty" - roses that are beautiful not only in their individual blossoms, but as an overall bush. Banksia lutea, as it bursts into bloom all over town, suddenly appearing all over large trees, and dripping down from on high, would certainly be my favorite. All of the teas are graceful shrubs if you have enough room for them, and also have gorgeous flowers. MAC is beautiful in my garden because it has climbed up several old plum & fig trees, and I can see blossoms from my bedroom window as I speak, seemingly floating all over the top of our fruit tree forrest. This has been going on non-stop since March! Ditto Cl Peace, which is now producing blossoms all over the top of a huge pomegranite bush - its third bloom flush so far this year. I have a dark red/purple many many petaled mystery rose that I found in our garden (from where it was growing inside of a Japanese quince bush, I would say it was planted at least in the 1930s) which I rooted & planted out by the street in the sun, right next to the sidewalk. It blooms for 10 months of the year, and is amazingly fragrant with that heady "old rose" fragrance. Our street is a busy street, as is the sidewalk. This rose is only about 4-5 feet tall, so the blossoms are very accessible to passer- byes who want to smell it. I enjoy watching people's reactions when I am near there weeding or whatever - it is truly a "beautiful" rose, as it startles people into a brief happiness! Jackie

Yes this new garden is probably going to be the smallest and most slapdash garden I have ever started out with. It couldn't be helped, it was this way or no garden for spring. I knew I could never survive winter without some hope of a garden! The lasagna style garden formation has worked out quite well over the years for me. This time however it was a formidable prospect. Our property was abandoned for several years so the grass was waist high when we purchased it. My husband knocked down the grass then mowed it quite short. I sprayed the area twice with roundup (which I wouldn't normally use) and then I planted a bunch of roses, 7 varieties of species lillies, dozens of bulbs, some hosta, catnip and a few reliable perennials, willy nilly. I was fairly certain I could have heavy losses from frost heaves but it was the best I could do that late in the year. Happily, I located the garden in a spot where the snow naturally drifts and collects all winter so it looks like I only lost one plant. The tulips and daffs are blooming beautifully and cheer me immensly! I have stacks of newspaper I scrounged for and saved all winter waiting to be put to use. My DD brought me a dozen bags of mulch for Mothers day too. I am waiting for the soil to warm up more so that I can lay the newspaper down and cover it neatly with mulch. Because I didn't get a vegie garden area going last fall either I am going to plant vegies in the flower bed. Lots of empty space for them there while the perennials take their first year of "sleep". Instead of towering spires of delphiniums and alce it will be heirloom tomatoes and bean pole towers. It will be cool I think! Right now though I am glad that I live in a rural area because this years spring chaos mess would never fly with in town neighbors. We have 5 acres we are cleaning up and clearing brush on here. We are also clearing out the area we want our new home to be built on (and building it ourselves!). I suspect no matter how hard my husband and I work this summer that we will never be caught up and untidyness will rule!

Ruth, we have sparrows, sparrows, and more sparrows. Oh, and a couple of red birds and a woodpecker. Love the red birds. A couple of years back, we had Cedar Waxwings. We have not seen them since. Love your pics of the waxwings and goldfinches. Sure wish we knew what to grow to attract them to our yard again. I've never seen a real goldfinch. What do you feed them? We have all these birdfeeders and mostly just sparrows. We go down to Rockport and Port A just to see the birds but we would love to see more of a variety in our back yard.

Michigan is actually very agriculturally diverse and I live in the "fruit ridge", so I can easily get fruit and berries from apples to apricots, cherries to blueberries, beans, asparagus, raspberries, melons. I can't get/grow fresh Meyer lemons and figs, though, except on very rare occasions. My garden provides me with pretty much any vegetable I fancy, except cabbage and brussels sprouts because the groundhogs love them and get them far before they become mature. We have local dairies and so can get any cheese I want, I'm not much of a cheese fan and I did take that cheese making class so I can make mozzarella, feta, ricotta. Cheddar/swiss/provolone/etc can be had at Aldi and it's fine with me. Fortunately, I'm only an hour from Grand Rapids, where I can find Asian groceries, a Mediterranean market, Hispanic items, halal grocery stores, Trader Joe's, Penzey's. The Downtown Market has fresh seafood. The downside is that just because it's available doesn't mean it's affordable, or I'd be eating seafood every day. Somehow Michigan is quite a long way from the ocean, LOL. We also have The Cheese Lady with her 90+ varieties of cheese, many of which I cannot correctly pronounce. (grin) Unless I make that trip, though, my small town is very limited, having no independent or ethic grocers. I would love to get freshly made tortillas, like I did when I lived closer to the migrant centered groceries, and Meyer lemons don't store well, so having them more regularly available would be nice. I don't care about chilies at all, so that's not a problem, but avocados are usually not great, nor is citrus, something about shipping thousands of miles doesn't improve them. jakkom, it's funny about those black walnuts. Here I pick them up in 5 gallon buckets because they turn into missiles when hit with a lawn mower. I dump them in the back of the pasture and hope the squirrels take them. They're a devil to crack, though, I'm assuming you get the nutmeats already removed from the shell? My job used to be to sit on the porch with a hammer, drop a black walnut into a depression Dad made in a board, and whack it until it broke, then Dad would spend evenings picking the nutmeats from the shells and storing them in glass jars in the fridge. I never did like the darned things, too many times whacking my thumb. I probably should have eaten them in revenge! Annie