Salvia 'Coral Nymph' - absolutely beautiful and the hummers love it too! Zinnia Profusion Apricot - pretty color, neat clumps, I may try other colors of Profusion series next year. Snapdragon 'Black Prince' - these are gorgeous and still blooming away, while the Snapdragon tall mix have faded away. But they were much shorter than I expected so they'll go in the front of the border next year. Scarlet runner bean 'Painted Lady' - has bicolor red and white blooms that are really pretty. Cardinal climber (Ipomoea x sloteri) - VERY vigorous grower, and finally started blooming in the last couple weeks with pretty red tubular flowers. The hummers love this too. I'm sure there are others and I WS'd lots of perennials, many will not bloom this year so we'll see.

I loved the southern Maine show best when it was held in the Industrial Park in Scarborough years ago. There were adequate facilities and parking at that time. It is too bad that site is unavailable. I appreciated the hard work that has been done to continue the southern Maine show over the years. Thank you Paul! It gave me lots of ideas and increased my visits to local nurseries! I was spoiled having these shows so close by. There was a show in Portland this year. I heard it wasn't well attended due to the bad snowstorms that weekend. I was already in Portland when it started snowing hard, so I turned back. Bangor is a long drive from Portland, but I find well-worth the trip from southern Maine. That show is held in April so the weather may be better, too. There's adequate parking, beautiful displays, well-lit, many vendors, displays from local children, too! I love seeing the seeds sprouting in the kid displays! Wish we'd done that when I was in school! I never have found the Bangor show over-crowded. I do business with some of the nurseries, too, as some do mail order. It feels more like a "Maine" show.

oswegian - I do understand your point of view. My problem with the mayor is, he cares more about his reputation and pleasing those with the money to support him, than in taking care of ALL of his constituents. The majority of reasonably priced housing in Chicago is GONE to developers. I'm not talking about the small operations who rehab a few buildings or two - I'm talking about entire communities wiped out, where $ 700-$ 800 1-bedrooms are wiped out to make room for $ 1800 1-bedrooms and $ 2500 2-bedrooms. Let's not forget the "accomplishment" of tearing out the majority of the CHA buildings. Now, yes, they needed to go. BUT. Do you know the figures of how many of those people were actually relocated to a new home? It's pathetic. These people were completely uprooted and given nowhere to go. NOWHERE. Daley's attitude is to get rid of all the poor people and spend millions of dollars to make everything pretty and shiny. Let's just pretend the poor don't exist! The kicker, for me, is when an area that had never been on anyone's radar started getting "gentrified". It had been downmarket (so to speak) for YEARS. There was a homeless shelter there for almost 20 years. Then a bunch of stupid investors invaded, bought up all the land and buildings around it, and suddenly the yuppies are b*tching and moaning and moving heaven and earth to get the shelter and "those people" away from their precious material possessions. I'm all for making a city livable. Just not when the rich steal from the poor and kick them to the curbs of the suburbs to do it. And it's not just the "really poor" poor - the lower middle-class (or upper lower-class), aka the working poor, are getting shafted too. The people being displaced have to go somewhere, and they can't all afford to go to the suburbs. The amount of overcrowding in the undesirable neighborhoods will increase. Pretty soon we'll have the extreme wealth of Gold Coast, the wealth of the wanna-be Gold Coast (aka Bucktown type neighborhoods), and then the worst of the worst where even the developers are afraid to go, with no middle ground in between. I won't even start on the constant corruption in his regime either. Every couple of months for twenty years, we have on the one hand "I run this place, I have a hand in everything and I'm on top of things, yessir, I'm the man who gets it done" and on the other hand "No, I didn't know anything about that. My employees were doing WHAT?" And the brazen overnight stealth destruction of Meigs Field, and the revamping of O'Hare which is a billion dollar white elephant that won't actually fix the problems...his hubris knows no bounds. I'll stop now. This is supposed to be a gardening forum. Sorry I got carried away.

I received a number of MG seedlings at a swap in the spring and I am just loving them. I have grown MG for a long time. I was getting a little bored with the tried and true. I am so happy with the ones I have this year. I had Blue Jet..which is a beauty. Large blossoms of pastel blue with a darker blue marking inside. The description would not have interested me in the blooms, but I look forward to going out and seeing them in the morning not sure why. The Blue Jet was slow starting but now is blooming abundantly. I had Milky Way that was just ok. White, small blossoms with rose markings. But one of the most specatcular ones I grew was a Japanese MG, that had a variegated leaf that was not shaped like a heart but was elongated and shaped differently and had frilly maroonish/rose very different color blossom. I am so sorry to say I don't know the name of it. But I think I can find out, because I know who sowed the seed. I used a permanent marker on scotch tape and it wore right off. I will try to find that out for you.