Good luck at the event, Barb! I'm sure you'll do fine.

Buona fortuna, Barb. I know you're going to kick ass.

She's also planning on having plants she thinks are pretty put in front of the short ends of the beds in order to "camouflage" them from the street view. She's definitely a middle class child of the '50s in her tastes.

Well, it's her house. My mom has a black leather couch which is 50% duct tape. Seriously, she keeps a roll of black duct tape in the side table to fix any cracks or tears. She finds it "comfortable," so the center of her living room is dominated by this '80's-looking monster. My brothers and I offered to buy her a new one, but no go. The thing is, it's her house--I wouldn't like it if she told me what to put in my house either.

Wow. I thought my mom was persnickety. She's an awesome gardener though EXHIBIT A EXHIBIT B EXHIBIT C EXHIBIT D

You're absolutely right it's her house, Scrappy. However, she will overrule my dad with this stuff, too. He can't do a lot of what he'd like to do for his own projects and he's the one paying the bills. She also overruled me in what I did in my house as well (I co-owned it with my parents but it was meant to be my house. It was 400 mi away from them. If I'd known up front how much she was going to micromanage, I never would have agreed to the arrangement.)

It just would have helped if she'd been clear about this stuff from the beginning. It's been over a month of talking details about this plan and, for instance, she never let my dad or me know that she wanted turf lifted until the day before yesterday. We could have lifted that out while we were waiting for the kit to get here. Now she wants the turf put back. Etc.

So I can be simultaneously glad that she's allowing me to put a raised bed in and exhausted at the persnicketiness.

Love that arbor, DJ.

Sweet peas are very pretty, easy to grow, and can be staked up to hide the rest of the garden.

My mom is a micromanager and vague about it. Like if I could just figure out what it is she wants I'd do it but it's all, "Why are you doing that?" "Where did you get that from?"

My classic example is coming home for Christmas and Mom asking me 40-billion questions about my plans that evening (the answer to all of which were, "I don't know. I just got here). Until she finally got snippy and said, "I JUST WANTED TO KNOW IF YOU WANT TO HAVE DINNER WITH US!"

Well, damn woman, ask that then. I would be happy to change or cancel plans I had to have dinner. Y'all are my parents and I love you.

Thanks Spidra! I love looking through those pictures. This [link] my favorite spot at my parents and I spend whole afternoons in that swing with iced tea with too much lemon.

Hahaha! Yeah, that sounds familiar. Although my Dad is guilty of similar things. He tends to use pronouns before he tells anyone else the antecedents. Then gets angry when we don't understand what he's referring to.

Laga, I could totally make the bed look great. I've got tons of great flowers to put in, including sweet peas. But she flat out refuses to trust me. And given that our tastes are different (I think plain wood is beautiful, she'd probably prefer painted wood or plastic), what I and others think is beautiful is not necessarily what she thinks is beautiful.