The black, grey and red one looks like an angry little monkey face

Yeah, I'm sure there is all manner of crud in those ducts still. They did clean them, but after that they were still sanding and patching, etc. When I moved in, I opened one of the return air grills and found a huge chunk of drywall... I wish I had been here sooner during the construction phase of this house. When they lifted the carpet in the basement I could see that nobody bothered to do more than a cursory sweeping of the basement floor before the carpet went down.

It's really hard when you can't be there to watch with an eagle eye, short cuts abound!

Night all! Talk tomorrow!

Bye Bobbi, have a good night :)

Omg, have you ever watched Duck Dynasty? Makes me laugh out loud! They decided to make their own wine, and one of the boys just described it: "The wine we have created kinda tastes... like a cross between doe urine... and jalapeño juice.... and it smells... like coon pee..."

Nite bobbi, sweet dreams!

Yeah, I think some of the trades think that the hvac ducting is a convenient garbage can. Most of mine had temporary screens over them to prevent the large chunks from falling in, but yeah.

Here's a few more, very different look

@kimdee...that show is hilarious! And the funny stuff just rolls out of them, it doesn't seem set up at all.

@jayme -- Jase is so deadpanned... it makes everything he says even funnier. Also in this episode, the granddaughters were dressing up Si with makeup and nail polish and a sparkly tiara, too funny!

The dark one is like the bottom of the ocean, the black and gray look like rooster heads, the black and gold looks like jacks beanstalk growing up to the night sky and the deep blue and pink is like lovely lace.
Thank you for sharing them with me, eztia. :)

Okay Ez, as requested. The first two pics are the entrance and exit to my secret garden so shhhh. The deck from down in the yard and my favourite pond pic early one morning.

Just beautiful, Candace!

Arvo all. BAD day today, silly me sat up till 3AM watching Wimbledon, which wasn't that bad a thing to do in normal circumstances, except DD and the kids came back last night and Miss 7 decided to come into bed with me this morning at some ghastly hour before I quite reached consciousness. It is dawning on her just how close Friday is and their departure and she has become soooooo super affectionate. It is so nice and I will certainly miss them all when they leave.

Found this article this morning too that made me feel better.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/28/australia-is-the-worlds-happiest-country-again/

a few more

Gorgeous!!!! Love your gardens, lucky you, lucky hardworking you!! :)

Roo, cuddle up, Friday is close, a little lost sleep is nothing, we all know that as insomniacs anyway. Enjoy the week, every drop!! And whoa ho!! Andy Murray, not too shabby, never thought he'd beat djokovic. Result!! :)

Candace, thank you for the garden photos, you have my perfect garden ideas IF I had more space. Now I have the shadowing from the rotten neighbour's trees too it is going to cramp my garden even more. I'm so glad you posted the posted of the Brugmansias, I never knew the correct name for them. DD's ex MIL had them growing everywhere at her house and gave me a cutting that just took off. I've since grown about 7 or 8 more from cuttings. I have the creamy white one and the perfume at night is gorgeous, not too strong, just enough. I believe the flowers are highly poisonous though. I have been thinking of taking some more cuttings and growing them in pots as standards, they look amazing done like that, but I know it takes time to get them right. Maybe I might do that this spring as I have 3 gorgeous dark blue highly glazed pots that I need something in. Could then put some annuals at the base.

You are all giving me the gardening bug, I've had so little time for mine this year, but just have to wait for things to dry out a bit after all the rain we had.

Love it Candace!! Beautiful, just beautiful!

Mforr, I was quite shocked how easily Andy did beat Novak - it was a hard match, but Novak just didn't deliver, I didn't feel he played his best at all. The women's final was such a let down I was hoping for a better match

Candace, I love your rambly garden, the trend here now is to structure with rows and rows of the same plants and dd is always at me for mixing my plants up, but that is the way I like it. I also like the plants I can take cuttings from or break up - free plants are the best.

Goodnight lovely ladies, talk to you tomorrow :)
Wonder if things had been different with the grass conditions early in tournament, roo? Bet there would have been a different result if some of the others hadn't been knocked out so early.

I missed a lot of it because it generally doesn't start till around 10.30pm here and goes all night - were there problems with the grass? They said last night when Novak slipped that the loose soil had come up on top of the grass in the most played areas causing it to be slippery but they used vacuum cleaners on it every day to suck up all the loose soil. I'm wondering if they watered it each night, that should have helped.

I was really sad to see Federer go so soon, I really like him, he is such a gentleman at all times.

Sleep tight all, I feel an afternoon nanny nap coming on.

Complaints about the length of grass and clippings left on surface, a lot of people fell in early rounds, of course there was talk of why didn't they have the lesser ranked play on court before the big guns came out, the higher ranked being more "valuable" and shouldn't risk injury. Hmmmm... How about just making things safe for everybody? Silly. Ok, night for reals now ;)

I missed all that - couldn't agree more.

Okay Ez, here's a few more for you and one for Angela.

Angela, I wanted to show you my really ugly shed. The doors were so dented it was awful. I noticed in the area your going to deal with that there is a building there of some sort, perhaps a garage and a fence? Anyway, I wanted to show you how I used these really cheap mirrors to hide the doors and reflect the plants in the bed in front of the shed. This has worked like a hot damn!!!!! Cheap mirrors, looks like twice the amount of plants in a distance and looks great in winter too. I have never in 7 years cleaned those mirrors. Just thought I'd toss this idea at you cause it really breaks up the solid look of any structure.

I have always wanted a pond or a water feature! Well, I guess I kind of have a big water feature now with the lake out back, but yours is so pretty!

Candace - I'm just gonna come live in your garden. It looks mucho relaxing!!!

mforr, jayme, roo thank you. Surprisingly it's really not much work. In the beginning it certainly was but not now that it's established. I rarely pick weeds cause that sucks but I do use round up and I don't sweat it, if I have a few.

roo, my next yard will not be this rambly but this yard lent itself that direction. In the next yard I'm going to walk with a tape measure and a level and do the structure/row thing. Mass plantings of like plants. Yes, the Brugmansia are poisonous so don't take a bite. The white ones you have, potted in a dark blue pot will be amazing!!!! Avoid the purple ones, there a pain in the butt and the flowers are very small compared to the white and yellow ones. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people don't use the correct name for plants. I leave the tags or remake the tags so I always know. Heck, I even make a few extra so if someone wants one they can just take the name of whatever it is. Hahaha, I can see there only one Brugmansia tag left in the photo I posted.

Kimdee can you plant a bit in your yard and extend the planting towards the lake?
Robin, you betcha, I can hang out all day in the yard and not do a darn thing.

Holy cow it's 10pm arrg!!!! 2 am comes quick, night all :)

When I first started redoing the back garden, I kept it fairly simple so I could manage it as BH had no interest at all. Of course once it started taking shape and the neighbours started oohing and ahhing over it, BH suddenly started working on it too and did lawn edgings and other heavy work to take the credit for it all. We had a really bad storm one weekend with trees down everywhere so that week when everyone was around cutting the trees up and mulching them, he wandered around till he found a guy who was happy to dump his mulch for us to get rid of it and only charged us $50 for the whole truckload. We moved mulch for weeks, gave it away to neighbours and ended up with 6" of mulch over all our gardens. Has taken years to break down but in that time we rarely saw a weed and other than a bit of pruning and shaping or moving things planted in wrong spots, it has been really easy to maintain. I did an Agapanthus border right around and they looked beautiful every Christmas but then they started taking over so I dug them all out and have quite a mixed border now. Unfortunately, it all needs new mulching and the weeds are really finding their way in requiring a lot of work, although I have taken to hoeing them in now and that seems to be working. We use Roundup on the lawns.

I haven't seen the purple Brugmansia at all anywhere, maybe we don't have them, but I have seen the white ones done as standards in gardens and they look fantastic in full flower. Have you ever tried standards? Going to be a bit of hit and miss for me, but at least the plants are free if I get it wrong.

Awesome. Kimdee? Another place on our road trip?

Candace, I can plant back there if I want... I think... as a long as I don't make things more difficult for the people who cut the grass. I think next year, I am going to have someone come out and have a look and make a planting plan and give me some ideas and suggestions to pretty things up back there.

@Robin -- definitely an add to the list!

I'm so glad Candace came back, I just knew you three would hit it off, even before we discovered how close you all are.

Haven't seen my Aussie support for a few days, hope she comes back.

Roo... I think if you put all of us OLLD's (and those of us 'in training') in a room, it would truly be the most amazing chatty creative room in the world. Our poor roosters wouldn't know what hit them!!!

Robin, we have already fantasised about a big meet up. Can you imagine us in a restaurant??? We would need a private room, I'm sure. I think kittypa has been around enough to be surprised at nothing, but Sir David might be a bit overwhelmed until he regains his strength.

Ok. I need to get to bed. Looks like I have to go to my moms place tomorrow to do some more yard work. My brother seems to be incapable of basic landscape maintenance (aka mowing the lawn - never mind trimming) so being the oldest, most responsible, it falls to me. Insert angry growl here.

Bedtime. Good night all!

Ez, I had a laugh at Hogie, he didn't surprise me at all .................. as a dog he makes an excellent water feature.

Roo - I think we should all somehow find a way to get together! That would be truly amazing. I admire each and every one of you, and would be honoured to meet you all.

Ok Robin ...................... GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

Little Brothers are always the most useless.

I am so determined to get to LA sometime, even more so to be closer to you guys and who knows............. these days the impossible IS possible.

Ez, where did you get the Fractal design programme??

I have an amazing little brother. But yeah the oldest always get stuck with stuff brothers can't or won't deal with for parents, especially if the oldest is female.

A meet-up would be a hoot!

Goodnight lovelies... Got to get some rest so I can deal with my "problem child" in the morning. Wish me luck. xoxo

Yeah, I have an "amazing" little bother too - so amazing you probably wouldn't believe me.

Good luck for the morning. Get a good night's sleep, don't stress.

Wow, just finish catching up

Bobbi- My hone is a single family with the biggest lot. I bought the house with the idea if I wanted to expand I could. Nut it is a lot of work. Candace- gorgeous girl and I will look at the mirror idea.

I will be there at the meet up

As far as dusting one thing I have learned is that carpet less houses attract more dust.

Angela, the same amount of dust will get into a house, it is just that carpet will absorb it so it doesn't show and also stop it floating around in air currents and breezes, but it is all still there. However often you have to clean a hard floor, applies to carpet if you want to keep the carpet in tip top condition. I get annoyed at times here when people say carpet is dirty, I couldn't live without mine but, like all flooring it has to be cleaned at least every second day with a good quality vacuum cleaner. Someone like Ez living in a really dusty climate would have to clean every day, irrespective of the surface. In fact dust and grit left in a carpet can abrade the fibres and break them, destroying the carpet. I've been involved in a few discussions here too where people complain about dirt getting trapped under the carpet and it never comes out ........... my old carpet was down for 45 years and when I took it up there was no dust or dirt under the carpet, I just had a bit of residue under the underlay which was an old fibrous type one that was the type used when I had my first carpet done and which was starting to disintegrate, but it was UNDER the underlay and not causing any problems at all and not there because of lack of cleaning.

You said exactly what I was trying to say. I have no carpet in my house

EZ, I agree with you about less airborne pet fur! Sometime when I empty my vacuum I think I could make a whole new dog.