username.exe

Driving in West Hollywood: getting the perfect parking space before you've had the chance to stress out driving around the block several times.

Mrs Danvers

They like a planting zone of around 4. I'm allegedly at zone 5 but have been told to plant for zone 4 "because you never know what will happen in Colorado"

I've learned to plant and appreciate what will grow in this climate. Before the lilac bushes I tried buddleia (butterfly bush) that is similar in blooms and smell and will last all summer long rather than two weeks of blooms. The buddleia flowered the first and second year I planted them and then after a long arduous winter they failed to come back.

I wish gardening hadn't have been so easy in the UK because practically anything we stuck in the ground flourished there. Not so here, and it's difficult to plant for high desert but I've pretty much done all kinds of early bulbs, colorado blue spruce, hollyhocks, sunflowers, juniper bushes, peonies, aster will all grow here and come back. And then there's the lilacs and snowball viburnums which are flowering shrubs.....but only for two weeks.

One thing I miss the UK for is the carefree gardening.

Pulaski

That's funny, after I dug out the deformed lilac I planted a buddleia. We have had a lot of success with things that like the climate here - the azaleas and other bushes around the house thrive, including hydrangeas, a snowball bush, a fringe tree and couple of buddleias. Irises of various varieties also thrive, as do daffodils, and peonys; hostas do well, especially in the shady areas, but the deer eat them.

Vegetables that like the warm weather produce heavy crops with negligible care - especially tomatoes and cucumbers, and also beans and corn - corn which the deer and the coons just love! It is too warm for rhubarb, and we don't have the right sort of soil for potatoes, and the last time I tried to grow some a groundhog ate them.

WEBlue

Buddleias are pretty hard to kill (especially in Zone 5 and warmer). We have a young one that seemed dead as a doornail after this last awful winter with snow up to 5 feet high. But I kept watering it through the drought & last month it slowly sent up a few little shoots from the root and now those are a few inches tall. So it wasn't all dead, maybe just half dead, and needed some time to recover....

Agreed!

Although I don't miss fighting the weeds that also grew so well on my property there--endless bindweed, thistles, cow parsley, bamboo that took over, and of course the ivy that did its best to cover our house.

Mrs Danvers

Actually, to be fair this is what happened with my buddleia, that it wasn't growing from the wood but instead grew from the roots like yours after it had been buried in piles of snow. My intention for the shrub was something of a screen between my house and my neighbours. It probably would have grown, but never to the giddy heights the bush would have in the UK so I pulled it up and put the lilacs there instead and they've been great as a screen and are enormous now after eight years.

I also have one particular rose bush that never grows from the wood but always sends up shoots. I didn't plant it, and it's in the corner of the yard but I imagine it wasn't meant for this hardiness zone. Still has great roses though.

Funnily enough I never dealt with bindweed in the UK but have to here. Weed and Feed seems to keep it under control but it does come back year after year.

We harvested the rhubarb about three weeks ago and it had liked the wet spring. Vegetables grow fine but the soil here is clay mixed with huge rocks. You could throw pots with it. Pretty much it all has to be removed and then we buy garden soil from Home Depot.

Nutmegger

Buddleias need to be pruned back really hard to a dead-looking bare stick every spring. I hack mine back unmercifully and by July have a great big tree again. I have a number of varieties of hydrangea, and some grow from the same wood as the prior year, but others -- in particular the limelight -- need to be cut back ruthlessly. Mine was a bare stick a month ago, and is now over four feet tall again.

BubbleChog

Anytime the SmallChog naps
Sitting on my deck drinking mojitos and being glad I'm not stuck in an office in England
Playing Trivial pursuit over skype with my Best friends
When someone says "I love your accent" and doesn't follow it up with how Irish/Scottish/English they are because their great great grandmother came from somewhere in Europe
HusbandChog changing the sheets without being asked

WEBlue

I'm hoping mine will grow to a few feet at least this summer. Ours in the UK was gigantic and nearly pushed over a fence no matter how much I sawed away at its wayward branches.


We have the former variety of hydrangea (grows only from the wood), a beautiful dark blue. They came with the house & I'm not used to them, so I've been a bit afraid to touch them. But as they're looking very straggly I suppose I should try to tidy them up after the bloom is over. :/

BubbleChog

HusbandChog has parking spot finding as his special mutant power. Though it is much more impressive in NYC than here in ATL

NatashaB

That's my pet peeve! I don't have an accent. Everyone else here does!

Pulaski

I love that. I'd be sorry if it stopped, but it hasn't in the 13 years I've been here, and I still average about 3-4 comments a month about my accent. Two or three times a day isn't unusual. ..... My accent apparently hasn't changed since I left Sheffield at eight, so it is unlikely to change now.

SultanOfSwing

You may be the only person who actually likes that.

I got sick of it the second time someone said it to me. I never thought I'd actually be relieved to be losing my accent but now I rarely hear it, it's much better. Until I go back home and everyone starts asking me if I'm American. Can't bloody win ...

That being said, another anti pet peeve of mine then would be when you're going about your daily business, when the complete strangers you encounter along the way in order to complete said business don't attempt to strike up a conversation with you because they understand that you don't know them and don't want to waste your time talking to them. Admittedly rare, that one.

yellowroom

With hydrangea, i was tought that you leave the dead blooms on all winter, and then tidy up in the spring, just ahead of any buds starting to come out.

Seemed to work for me in England and Virginia. The trick is keeping an eye on then and heading with your secateurs at the right time. Think the idea is not to cut too early as this leaves them vulnerable to any late frosts.

WEBlue

Yes, it's impossible to know what kind of hydrangea you've got unless you've bought and planted it yourself....

Dorothy

It's winter here, so flannel sheets and flannel pj's.