Gorper99 wrote: "Yellowfever-How can you own a dealer?" I have owned many business including a lawn and garden shop where I sold IH/IH Cub Cadet, and then Cub Cadet, Toro, Honda, Billy Goat, Stihl, Husq, XMark, Ford, and then New Holland. Many other manufactures of the years as well but these where the main ones I delt with. Not sure what you mean by: "How can you own a dealer" Last time I checked anytime you walk in a L&G shop someone ones it. I got out of that and into IT of all things. I now own a Technical Consulting company. And yes, you can own one of those as well.

I built an artificial bog for hosta and found many other plants do well also, including daylilies. I've tried several plants to see how they would do and found that ajuga grows like a weed. A small bog could be setup just for rapid propagation. I have chocolate chip and crispa in the bog. Search my name for how I did the bog, not hard. On the bog list are several methods that can be large or small.

Mike, Wildseed Farms has amazing prices on some common seeds, both wildflowers and ornamental garden-type flowers, and also some herb seeds as well. You can buy in small or huge quantities. I spent about $4 on two packs of Laura Bush petunia seeds a few years ago, and have had purple, pink and white Laura Bush petunias ever since. They cost me nothing because they reseed everywhere. (Laura Bush is an heat-tolerant ornamental petunia that blooms all summer long even when the temps are in the 100s, unlike the more heat-sensitive bedding plant petunias you buy in stores.) Every time I see the pots and hanging baskets of petunias in stores in the early spring I want some. They're so pretty and I'm so starved for flowers at that point. Then, I remind myself to be patient and my Laura Bush reseeders will pop up out of the ground and be blooming before I know it.....and they do. I've planted a lot of flowers, both wildflowers and then others like cultivated varieties of cosmos, sunflowers and zinnias from Wildseed Farms and have been happy with every single one. Almost all of them reseed for me, which means I'm not running back and buying more seed every year. Right now, I still have 5 containers of the purple-flowered Laura Bush petunia in bloom. I dug up the tiny seedlings out of the garden path last March or April and put them in the pots. Periodically I shear them back to stimulate new flowering growth. At night, I roll or drag them into the garage. Sometimes, I have left them out with temps as low as 10 degrees though, and they haven't frozen yet. These few flowers keep my spirit nourished in the winter when they aren't any native flowers in bloom. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Wildseed's Website

I love your tulips, Jali! And I love your story that goes with them even more! It's always special for me when I know something came from somebody at a swap, but knowing yours came from your grandmother makes them even extra special! Was that the year the tornado "went down main street" in Limon? It must be! I was watching the weather on TV that day, flipping channels, seems to me there were tornados all over the place that day, and all of a sudden the radar went down--on ALL the channels! The "old fashioned" radar came from Limon back then, and the radar station was taken out! It was barely 10 minutes, as I recall, when the stations got radar up and running again and they were picking it up from doppler radar at the airport. That was the day all the stations switched over to doppler radar--rather unexpectedly! And it was pretty freaky to be watching TV that day, 'cause when the "old" radar suddenly "went away," everybody knew for sure that something very serious had happened in Limon, but it was a while before anybody could confirm how bad it really was. I'm glad your grandmother stayed safe in that storm! And glad you have her tulips for such a very special memory. Misty, I usually like tulips that Look Like Tulips, but that pink and white one of yours is sure pretty! It almost looks like a rose! Love your black one too! I got some 'Ronaldo' tulips from Barb a couple years ago and they're a very, very dark red too. Here's a pic. They froze badly last year, the foliage too, and I didn't know if I'd get any flowers at all this year, but they seem to have recovered amazingly well! The species tulips in front were on sale last fall and were another one of the things I didn't get planted till late January. I had no idea when they'd come up this year! Was hoping they might bloom at the same time as the 'Ronaldo' but they didn't even start to come up until a little over a week ago so I had kind of given up on that happening. Then on Friday the first one started to open, and look at them today! The timing couldn't possibly have been better! The species tulip is Tulipa kaufmanniana 'Heart's Delight'. In the second pic you can see that the foliage is striped with purple! I hope they both bloom at the same time again next year! The 'King Alfred' dafs I posted above are going downhill fast at this point, but I have other, non-bulb, things starting to bloom all over the place! It's amazing how fast it's happening this year! This is Erysimum kotschyanum 'Orange Flame'. It's just starting to open, will be covered with flowers by the end of the week. I love it because of the color--there are very few perennials this color, and in Real Life it's even more orange than in the pic. I call it "crayon orange!" This is Phlox douglasii 'Cracker Jack'. And this one really is the shocking color just like it looks in the pic! It's not an easy one to grow--parts of it die off every year, but I've been able to keep it alive at least! And here are some of my plain old everyday primroses! They're so pretty, and the yellow (and white) ones are very fragrant. The "blue" one is really purple! I've never been able to get a pic of that one that comes out right! They've been blooming for a good month already. The purple stuff on the left is some of my Omnipresent Violas! (That one comes out purple in the pics, so why doesn't the primrose???) And this one is more of the purple violas with Arabis arendsii 'Compinkie' on the left, and the Ipheion uniflorum 'Rolf Fiedler' in the top right corner. (I accidentally named the Ipheion wrong in the pics in my original post! I called it 'Wisley Blue', which I have too, but the ones in the pics here and above are really 'Rolf Fiedler'. I corrected the caption on the pic itself.) And this isn't really a flower--but they always look like flowers to me when they change colors! This is the hen & chicks I have labeled "L", and they're starting to turn their "spring color." In another week or so the inside will be a solid deep red while the tips stay green. The first year I saw these changing color I thought I was imagining things!!! (The couple little light blue star flowers at the top of the pic are Ipheion 'Wisley Blue'! Not many flowers this year, and they're very similar to the other one!) Anybody else have spring things blooming now? Even if they're not bulbs! Skybird