Joining this thread very late... so sorry to hear about your husband's health problems, Mary Ann! Prayers that they can do something for him, and that he can come home quickly!
My name is Marilyn. I realize that there is another poster with the user name of "Marilyn", so you can continue to call me "Poly" if you wish. (Just not "Polly", as that reads too much like "Pollyanna", which is 180 degrees away from my personality!
)
I was born and raised in Chicago, was educated at various universities in Illinois, but came out here (the south San Francisco Bay Area, specifically "Silicon Valley") to work and live with my husband in the early 80s. (I worked as an R&D computer engineer for a large company for many years.) At present I live with only my husband and our dog Warp, whom you have "met". We have one daughter, who currently lives and works in Austin.
My main horticultural interest is in daylilies (which can't handle drought as well as irises do, and now we have rust to contend with), and I do a little pollen dabbing in that vein and try to have some new seedlings in bloom each year. I used to be active in one of the N. CA daylily clubs, but have not been for years.
Much as I like daylilies, I dislike monoculture and want the garden to be interesting in all seasons, so I also grow a variety of perennials. I love daffodils and have a few varieties here. I like dahlias very much, but have had little success at growing them. I also like chrysanthemums, but the rabbits make growing the landscaping/garden types problematic, and I have had indifferent success with growing the large "florist" types. (Basically those latter mums require a lot of finicky attention, at a time when I am busy with the daylilies.) I like
Heuchera but have found that the rabbits also like most kinds (thankfully they shun a couple of cultivars, or I would have none left in the garden).
Lest you think that the rabbits (and gophers) Eat All, there are many other plants here which the critters ignore, including Society Garlic (one variegated cultivar with lavender flowers (from which we have weeded out but are also growing separately non-variegated lavender flowered sports), and two white flowered cultivars),
Gaura, Bergenia, Euphorbia, Penstemon, Salvia, Stachys, Osteospermum, Iberis, Pelargonium, Helichrysum (with which I have a love/hate relationship), ferns, some NOID Shasta Daisies, a limited selection of roses, ornamental grasses, some flowering shrubs and sub-shrubs, and what-all-else. (I should mention that I have multiple varieties of some of those genera.)
Despite the critters and the shade, I also try to have a kitchen garden of sorts every year, though the selection of things that I grow is rather narrow. (Currently I have 6 different tomatoes, 3 varieties of peppers, struggling cucumbers and herbs (drought), a nice small patch of Japanese bunching onion (seed purchased pre-Fukushima), and arugula. Some cool seasons I also grow a variety of lettuces.)
I have grown a small number of irises for many years (some of them bought for my daughter when she was a little girl), and I have a large clump of an unregistered seedling iris that I hybridized many years ago from two of those older irises. Early this year I joined an iris club for the first time ever; nice people. (Also nice people on this forum!) This is the first year that I have bought new irises in maybe about 15 years, and unfortunately I seem to have bit off more than I can chew there.
Apart from my horticultural interests, I like hiking (when and to the extent that my knees or the rest of me is up to it), love the Sierra Nevada (though I only get up there once a year, tops), and like
some dogs. (I have to be honest here and say that there are some breeds which I simply can't stand, and others which I can't understand others' interest in.
) I am not a cat person (though DH and DD are), but I can appreciate their beauty and grace, and the companion value they have to others. I confess to being an Internet addict (also, sigh, a carbohydrate addict, who keeps falling off the low-carb bandwagon). When I get off the Web and read for pleasure, it is mostly in the SF or fantasy genre. Similarly, with TV and movies, our tastes run to SF, fantasy, or action/thrillers.
I am not talented in the arts/crafts sense, but a few times a year I bestir myself and make handcrafted soap (largely because that is what my skin does best with, particularly in the winter, and I have found that my skin likes "my" recipes better than soap that I can buy from handcrafted soap sellers - not to mention that it is cheaper to make it myself
).
Without delving into religion or politics (you see that I am doing my best to keep things calm here
), that pretty much sums it up.
