I was thinking more about Isabellas comment that the garden looked plain on the drawing and it dawned on me that she probably meant that there didnt appear to be anything on the drawing other than perhaps perennials in the beds. There are two reasons for that. The simple answer is that if I attempted to draw all the pretty symbols for trees and shrubs a la Booth and Hiss, all Im likely to produce is a confused mess! But the more important answer, from my perspective, is that when I look at my (and others) garden, I mentally edit out all but the patterns on the ground to decide whether the garden appeals to me or not. By patterns on the ground I mean the shape of the beds, the lawn, the paths, patios etc. If the shape doesnt feel right to me then the plantings, no matter how nice they are, wont totally take away the feeling that the garden needs to be changed somehow. What Ive shown in the drawing of my woodland area is the patterns on the ground as they are now with the proposed/possible changes. The tree and shrub layers have been edited out, other than an indication of where some of the tree trunks are. Im largely satisfied with the plantings I have in the woodland (although changes and additions are made on an on-going basis) but Im not satisfied with the overall pattern. That is what Im wrestling with changing come spring. The Booth and Hiss book is interesting but I find Im doing the same thing when I look at the drawings in it particularly with the masterplan drawings. I find them very busy and have to mentally edit out all the plant symbols and just look at the patterns on the ground before I can conclude whether I like the plan or not. I suspect that, since I have previously stated my strong liking for flowers and colors, I am perhaps viewed as having little interest in real design issues. Certainly I feel that painting the patterns with plants (particularly flowering ones!) is very important to add color, vibrancy and emotion to bring the garden to life. Plus its lots of fun to play with color and plant combinations! But a very important part of what I have been doing over the past 8 years as weve been developing the garden is trying to get the patterns on the ground to look and feel right. Getting the woodland patterns fixed is top of my to do list for 2008 And just to show that there are trees in the woodland :-) here are two of my favorites: The oak tree as viewed from the living room window in mid-November: (The sun was so bright that day that I had to adjust the color a bit or the LR would just appear black the shed is gray, not blue) The white redbud in late May (its bigger now this picture is 2006 as I didnt take a picture in 2007 You can see a bit of the old shed in this picture - it did blend more inconspicuously with the trees but was otherwise decrepit, ugly and impractical and had to go!) I just realized in my previous post with the sightlines on it... I usually look at the drawing the opposite way around - so I really meant that it looks like the shed should be shifted a few feet to the north - left - in that view, not right....

Tishtosh -- I like to do the journal by hand, too. I also use spiral ring. Divided into 4 sections, each marked with one of those colorful stickies, which can move as I write my way through the notebook in each section. 1. work log, where I write weather conditions and what I did in the garden, so I know what chores were done when each year (and can get an idea if it was a good time to do them.) If I plant something, I draw an arrow in the margin, so plantings are easy to find, and above the arrow I write what ammendments I used when planting. 2. Notes. This section has random things I don't want to forget--anything from info on varieties to food storage methods, along with warnings, like: don't plant radishes in with mesc mix as you can't tell radish greens from arugula. 3. Harvests. Shows dates and amounts of harvests. At first this helped me know I was making a profit and let me know how much I could spend guilt free on next years inputs. Now (because I'm so far ahead $ wise) it's to let me know when things come on year to year. Or to calculate things like, I just figured out that whether I planted broccoli in early April or in late May, it always took 7 weeks to maturity, so I need to look ahead 7 weeks and make sure I won't be traveling when the broccoli comes on. 4. money spent. This only takes one page, but I like keeping track. I use a new notebook each year, and each one is labeled on the front so I can compare year to year, too. GREAT winter entertainment, and also a great way to learn what works and what doesn't. Enjoy your journaling! Elisa

Ditto what Morz8 said. After the "Snowtober" storm last year, my neighbor and I cooperated to have some tree work in both of our yards, using my usual tree guy. They finally got around to doing the work in January. There was hardly any snow cover last winter, and most of neighbor's lawn wasn't even fully frozen. The tree company drove the bucket truck right over his side yard to get to my damaged silver maple, and left big track marks. They used a long handled pitch fork to lift the compressed marks. They also drove over the corner of my front garden with the chipper. That I "fluffed" up with the pitch fork and raked over. I also like to top dress the lawn with compost or good loam, especially where the grass is crappy or the ground is uneven. This helps to even out the grade and build up the organic matter in the soil, which encourages the turf grass to fill in and dominate over time.

(((Cross posted this on the 'Conversations' side yesterday)) I've been thinking about starting a garden blog lately. Not sure if I will actually do it or not, still pondering that one! I'm pretty ignorant about the ways of blogging though... I did get some of my questions answered on conversations, except for the one I am having the most trouble figuring out, how to manage pictures. I have ALL my pics on Photobucket. Shall we say hundreds? I constantly upload pics to certain albums (such as one for Perennials, organized alphabetically to coincide with my personal plant records etc), delete old pics and such. Trouble is the html links all get broken when I do this. How do you guys manage this problem? I would hate to forget, shuffle things around and then end up with blank pics on my blog that I would have to go back and fix later. I don't want to have a secondary hosting site- I would prefer it all on my current PB account if possible. As I said, I am challenged in this area, lol. Only way I could figure of doing it is to create a separate album for blog post pics on PB, and then sub-albums for each of my separate posts from there. I could copy the pics from my other albums and move the copy to the sub-album so the link will never be broken to the blog and I could still move or delete the originals (in the original album) as I liked. What do you think? Or is there a simpler way of doing it I have yet to think of? Thanks for any tips you can give! CMK