Kate, I always enjoy Biosphere, too. They have a very small staff and at certain times of the year, it can get quite overgrown and messy looking. But they have a wealth of plants, especially natives, that you can't find elsewhere. And they have a wealth of knowledge as well. Plus it is a MUST VISIT nursery if you have a butterfly garden, for sure. Jim Thomas is a very nice man who is well-respected in his field. He gives a tremendous amount of his time to local conservation projects, clean ups, restorations, etc. I like doing my little bit to help support his business, and I always find cool stuff there that I've never seen elsewhere. I'm planning to go out there in a couple of weeks, myself. I figure I deserve it since I had to miss this get together. Marcia

Hi everyone Ive been enjoying reading the threads and am thrilled at the opportunity for a plant swap! Charlene and Skybird, thanks for including me. I was hoping to attend and, due to some ongoing health challenges with high variation in energy levels (and a recent big dip), wont know if I can make it until the last minute. In the meantime, if I am able to pot / dig things up and make it down there, I look forward to bringing these offerings. Ive also listed some things I am fantasizing about :-). Hoping to bring: - bearded iris lavender (does anyone want any?) - sweet woodruff / candy tuft - brunnera (Nancy Ill have some for you) - Zauchneria (it is probably garrettii Orange Carpet approx 8-12 inches high, spreading habit Skybird, Ill put your name on some) - rudbekia triloba (Bonnie these or the coreopsis might fit what you want?) - coreopsis lanceolata (double sunburst 36" x 24") - knautia macedonica (color: burgundy wine) - California poppy seedlings - Geranium indoor plant, red: cuttings I'll also bring - A dogwood tree, rootbound, seeking a home; white-flowering Looking for: - Anemone sylvestris (spring blooming, wide-petaled; Skybird, thanks for putting my name on soooo many!!) - hymenoxys (thrifty leaf perky sue) - penstemons (rocky mountain) - Snow-in summer - Hostas - Dwarf iris deep purples or other dark colors - Veronicas, thymes and other ground covers for flagstone; - Aubrieta / rock cress (dark purples and fuscia) - evening primrose speciosa (the happily spreading pink kind - Skybird, how do you get images in your postings? mine don't seem to paste in)

After losing a couple of seasons to wilt, this year I am growing Celebrity tomatoes which are pretty resistant to everything. I am very pleased with the taste, texture, etc. It's nice to grow tomatoes, and I had just about given up hope. pat, hybrids with tolerances against certain diseases have just that, tolerances, they aren't resistant, which implies they never get that particular disease. They last maybe 1-2 weeks more if a particular disease is even in that geographical area and while that's of great use to commercial growers it's less so for backyard growers. Celebrity has the following tolerances: V=verticillium, not that common a systemic disease FF=tolerance to two races of Fusarium but not the third which is known to be in NJ as well, and not that common in NJ in general N=southern root knot nematode, not a problem anywhere in NJ T=TMV, not a major problem anywhere in the US except ion large greenhouse operations A= Alternaria, and if Alternaria Stem Canker it's found almost exclusively in CA. Wilt is a general term and there are many reasons why 0plants wilt, and some are disease related, and if you look thru the threads here you'll see other who have so called wilt diseases such as Bacterial Wilt, Southern Wilt, pith Necrosis, and on and on, and few varieties available to the home grower have tolerances against any of them. What is a major problem for almost everyone are the foliage diseases for which there are NO varieties, hybrid or OP, that are tolerant save three which are not of use to the home gardener. I know it looks so attrractive when one sees all those alphbetical designations next to a variety, but for the most part they are meaningless unless the specific pathogens are in that area and then it's only tolerance, not resistance. Hope that helps. Carolyn

I guess I qualify as an OB now although I didn't start out that way. We wound up firing our contractor halfway through the job due to his massive incompetence and dishonesty. It then took us several months to convince our bank to let us finish the job ourselves rather than risking getting involved with another crooked builder. Being a general contractor is far more about project management than it is about construction. The GC lines up sub-contractors, makes sure they show up and do the work they're supposed to, handles paperwork, and makes sure everybody gets paid when they're suppoesed to be paid. Many GCs probably couldn't hammer a nail in straight if they had to. To be a GC you need business skills and project management skills, and you need to know (or be willing to find out) what a construction job should look like when it is finished. It helps in dealing with subs to learn the lingo but you don't have to be able to hammer, saw, hang sheetrock, run electrical lines, or anything else. If you OB, plan to spend at least 20 hours per week and possibly more than that on the job. I just WISH we had just gone the owner-builder route right from the start. Neither DH nor I have any construction experience whatsoever but we had looked into being our own general contractors before we hired our builder. We even took a class on building your own home but then decided that we just didn't have the necessary time to devote to the task. Was that a mistake! I had done my homework and had spent a huge amount of time on this board before we ever broke ground - so I had a good idea of what to look for in quality work. It quickly became evident that my builder didn't have a clue and apparently he couldn't have cared less. His subs were obviously the cheapest he could find and often, I suspect, were undocumented day laborers. They didn't follow installation specifications for installed materials like Tyvek sheathing, my Jeld-wen windows, or the roofing shingles. I know because when things didn't look right to me, I got the specs from the manufacturers and checked their work myself. They also often didn't follow building codes - which I found out because I had put it in my contract that I would separately hire a third-party inspector to inspect all stages and that any work not meeting code would have to be redone at the builder's expense. The framer hired by my builder used I-beam trusses between the first and second floors instead of the open-web trusses I had specified. The framing was completed while I was out of town for two weeks and by the time I got back, the house was already sheathed and the roofer had started work. So it was too late (eg., economically unfeasible) to make the builder have the entire roof and second floor taken down so that the right trusses could be put in. My plans called for the HVAC units and all ductwork to be within the heated/cooled envelope of the house. When I demanded that my builder check with his engineer to ensure that holes could be cut through the i-beams large enough to accomodate the HVAC ducts, he assured me that would be "no problem." That was a lie. Even the holes that had to be cut through the i-beam trusses for plumbing drain lines weakened them enough that my third-party inspector insisted that extra trusses be installed to bear part of the load. No doubt putting those in was a major expense that the builder had to eat. There was no way HVAC ductwork could be run between the floors as designed. Instead, the HVAC units were put in the unairconditioned attic along with massive amounts of flexible ductwork. Instead of an attic that could someday be finished out to add a couple more bedrooms, I have two big HVAC units and what looks like a massive silver spiderweb totally filling the attic space. I also lost closet space in all my bedroom closets because ductwork chases down to the first floor had to be put somewhere. When I exploded about the lost usable square footage and the additional on-going costs associated with having the HVAC and ductwork up in the attic (we live in central Texas!) my builder tried to tell me that EVEN IF the framer had used open-web trusses, the ductwork still would not have been able to be run through the trusses and that "everybody puts HVAC units in the attic." DUH? Open web trusses are designed to allow ductwork and plumbing to be run them!! Had the man NEVER read anything about energy efficient building practices? Nope. He just trusted that his framer - who hardly spoke English - knew what he was doing. Despite all this, my builder kept telling me that he was a "professional" and that I should just relax and let him do his job. HAH! I can't think of a single task that ever he actually handled completely correctly from start to finish. Then, shortly after the HVAC units were installed, I got hit with a $54,000 lien because builder had not paid for my windows and patio doors even though he had been given draw money specifically for that purpose! That lien was immediately followed up by threats of two smaller liens from two other subcontractors (the portapotty provider and the exterior paint contractor)! And the builder admitted he didn't have the money to pay any of the three. At that point I was more than ready to fire him but my bank insisted that I could NOT do so. We paid off the liens and the unpaid subcontractors and I took over handling ALL monies and paying the subcontractors and suppliers directly instead of having draws go to the builder to pay them. No more money was going to flow into the builder's hands until my house was completed, at which point anything that was still left of the original contract price would be his "profit." By that point, the only thing the builder was doing was hiring subs and ordering materials. I was paying a third party inspector separately to check all work that I didn't feel competant to inspect myself. I was handling all the paperwork and making sure everybody got paid. But then the kicker... I discovered that builder was having materials delivered to my build - which I was paying for - and then having his subs (whom I was also paying!) move them to a spec house that he was building and install them there. I had had enough. I fired him. After taking over as GC, I had to spend as much time/effort on UNDOING some of the mistakes he made as on moving forward to finish the build. And the money he wasted/stole from us has forced us to cut back on the level of finishes that we had originally planned to have. My advice: Go take a course on building your own home. Spend time reading and learning everything you can about the building process. Learn the language. If you are reasonably intelligent and willing to devote the time, you CAN build your own home. Plus, there are businesses (Owner-Builder Network and UBuildIt.com are two that I know about although I've not used either one) that will help you by providing you with pre-vetted lists of sub-contractors and guiding you step by step through the process. If your state or your bank requires you to have a licensed builder, these organizations will be the builder-of-record for you. Of course they charge a fee for their services. I don't know how much but it is significantly less than a builder's profit margin. You can also hire a third-party inspector to make sure that you're getting everything built to code. Just make sure that all your subcontractors know that they don't get paid until your third party inspector signs off that the work is up to code. I designed my plan myself and I would love to see the house built as designed. The house we are in the process of finishing will eventually be "okay" but it will never be the house I dreamed of. So there is some chance that when we get this house built we will sell it and rebuild the same design in a new location. But next time I will definitely OB from the get go.