Greetings from Possum Lane. Happy Mother's Day, if applicable. Happy Whatever Day if not! I am easy to please. Truth is, I am too tired to care, one way or the other. It has been another day in the garden. Weeds just tremble at the sound of my name! They blow each other a quick good-bye kiss and pretend to be grass or azaleas, willing their little weedy hearts to be still. Oh god, she's been out in the sun too long............. sigh.

Actually, I have been outside most of the day except for a brief run to the grocery store. It's like a private contest I have with myself seeing how long it takes to spend $100 and still not have anything for supper. Know what I mean? Geeeeeeez! Well, the cats get to eat, what can I say? And then there was that brief run to the garden center to pay for the 25 bags of mulch he delivered last week... and to get 5 more bags... and there they were, blueberry plants! Well, I started to drool all over myself and knew I would not sleep until I owned my own blueberry plants. Soooooo, now, 3 blueberry plants, 4 more tomato plants, and 8 begonias later, I can barely walk! I also moved the hydrangea I planted yesterday, and put some calla lilies in its place. Truth is, I could use about another 20 bags of mulch. sigh.

It tried to rain a couple of times, but not hard enuf to have to come in the house. Finally I had the most important things in the ground and mulched. I limped inside, threw my clothes in the washer and myself in the tub. Tick drowning over, I fell into a chair and the phone started to ring, and ring, and ring.

Now I am not complaining about all the phone calls - please don't get me wrong! And one of them was from a dear friend who moved from the area about 4 years ago. She wanted to tell me how much she enjoyed my blog as well as my newsletter. Jackie was thrilled to hear that the magnolia tree she gave me several years ago has recovered after appearing to be dead last year. I really wanted to go out back and take a picture of the little tree, but I swear my legs just would not let me. I was lucky to be able to make myself a bite of dinner. I am on here while waiting for the dryer to stop - something to do since I don't seem to be able to just do nothing! Pitiful, isn't it?

Several of you have asked about my old house - or I should say the house where I used to live, as I did not own it - or I would still be there. When I lived there, I had 52 camellias, some of them were as tall as 15 feet when Elizabeth died. I had planted about 30 azaleas. Daffodil population was well over 1,000 bulbs, followed by gladiolias in the fall. There were many other misc. plantings, some rare, some common, all more than beautiful. She had a gardener a minimum of 20 hours a week, year round. The first owners her nephew sold the house to sold the one car garage and tore out 8 camellias, 5 azaleas and the wisteria to dump several tons of gravel in the back yard and have easier access to the 3 car garage where I kept my car. Gee, how did I manage to keep my big cars in that garage and navigate thru the plants without hitting anything? The big garage is where they kept the Packard. The garage they sold was right in front of the car showing on the left hand side of the picture. It had electricity and water in it, a cement floor with a drain channel in case you wanted to wash your car. There is now a pile of gravel. They spent more than the sale of the garage to have the cement floor smashed up and hauled out. Go figure.

The people were from Michigan. They had never seen camellias, so they cut them down and left the weed bushes. The cut down the blue spruce and more than half the crape myrtle. There are only 3 azaleas left. The rose garden is gone, the fig trees (don't they grow in Michigan?) the iris bed (18 varieties) and the 7 foot gardenia bush. Did I mention the double forsythia? All gone. I had planted several rare varieties of dog wood, a red (much darker than pink) a giant (flowers larger than the palm of your hand, 3 doubles, and 2 pinks. There are only 2 dogwood left in the front yard. Some of the daffodils still bloom, the glads have all been mowed down because they did not know what they were. There were camellias and azaleas all across the front of the house. As you can see they are gone.

Drew mentioned the house to me today at the garden center. He said he almost cried each day when he drove by and saw them cutting something else down. Wanna know the bad part? The people never actually lived there. They would come down from Mich. for a week or 2 at a time, cut and hack away, do as much damage as possible and head back to Mich. They moved here, finally, after a couple years of this stuff. Then the boyfriend decided he hated VA and he left after staying here a month. She put the house back up for sale and left a couple months after that. The new owners don't seem to live there either. They show up every so often, stay a few days and then are gone.

Word is the house is haunted. Well, I know that... so? On the other hand, if ERM was mad at me, I would not want to tangle with her ghost. She was a force to reckon with when she was alive. Her husband used to call her Queen Bess. Small wonder. Pardon the pun. Elizabeth was 4' 9". No, I would not want to argue with her ghost.

Rats, it is thundering. Time to unplug. See ya later.