The rose park nearby uses high phosphorus fertilizer (granules) but it doesn't have any deepening effect on their Austins due to high pH (alkaline) soil here. Phosphorus in chemical gets bound up to either calcium or magnesium in clay soil, if the pH is above neutral. There are a few Australian agriculture papers on increasing wheat yield via liquid, or soluble phosphorus. I'll try that next year on my pink daffodils - it's NOT pink here, it's blah beige in my alkaline soil. I saw them vivid and brilliant pink in my last house, with acidic soil. Susan, I hope you'll post your pics. in HMF. One doesn't need to be a member to post pics. I no longer use Photobucket since it's a pain to load pics in there. Loading pics in HMF is super easy, plus one can put comments next to the pictures. Roseseek (Kim Rupert) kept telling me to list the roses grown in my garden in HMF. I postponed, until now, it took exactly 10 minutes to click on the names of roses grown ... I have less than 50 roses.

Lucy, I'm so glad that you were able to meet up with me on my way down to Austin and on such short notice too. I had such a good time and I agree, the visit was waaaaay too short. Everyone, Lucy is just as kind and funny as she is here in the forum. Wish you all could meet her, she will keep you in stitches. The people at IKEA probably thought we were on something as much as we were laughing. We had the best time ever!!! Barb, I'm with you, it would be a blast if we could have a convention somewhere so we could all meet. It would have to be a whole weekend because I know we would have such a good time visiting with everyone. Deb

dtd, Do you have any idea how strenuous a weekend Katy and I had? Driving to WWF, talking so long we didn't get to the Conservancy open gardens, a long lunch at a micro winery, driving alllllll the way to another part of connecticut over hills, mountains, and by lakes, then going to 5 gardens (it may have been six). And then coming home to my weed infested lot threw me into such a funk, so I had to go back to bed. And you think you had a hard weekend?! Seriously, I need a little while to digest it all, and will post on the thread Deb started this morning. Idabean/Marie

Wow, that was quite a show. Did you notice the cat asleep in front of the basil? Wonder if there's catnip tucked away in there somewhere...lol