Lovely blooms! I'm completely unfamiliar with those, which makes them doubly interesting to me. :-) DH and I have been following your country's drought situation for a while. DH is in the wine business, so he's naturally concerned about the effect on the Australian wine industry. I sure do hope things improve, as I gather that some pretty drastic measures (restricting irrigation to essential food crops only and reclaiming water from sewage, in part) are looming on your horizon. I know this is off topic, but are desalinization plants being considered or built? I sure do hope that the situation isn't as dire as our press makes it seem.

Thanks for all the input so far gals! I have placed my order..like I really NEEDED anymore..yet I NEED so many more, lol. Brenda Country Gardens has Cypress Gardens on sale for $6 plus $5 shipping... if your new Cypress needs a sister, lol. That is a gorgeous pic!! thank you so much for sharing it..I'm sorry you lost your original CG. The offspring of CG in that pic..how old is the plant? GG, lol..I dont know how many I have.. I think about 30 right now, (DH is NOT happy about me needing some of "his" space in the basement this winter) but they are mostly NOID's..and the named ones that havent bloomed yet, well they may become NOID's as well with the luck I have been having! O BTW, I'm actually dressed at the moment, lol. We took the kids to see the fireworks our town was doing..they were awesome. Our town never scrimps on them..they get better every time! Amazing shows. They always kick butt over every other towns' shows I've been to. I wish I video taped it, so many cool new fireworks. But I was in my pj's & barefoot all day out in the garden & ponds.. Karyn, how old is your WM? Does it usually take a few years to bloom? I paid $19.95 for Wretched Mess..seems like a really good price to me, is it? Don't lie, lol. JT said the plants are all at least 14" tall and they say they are rooted for at least 3 months before they are ready to be sold. I didnt compare anywhere, I wanted it so bad. Did I do OK?

And, can we eventually make this thread about saving seeds, a 'how to' and a 'what i do' sort of thread? While I don't grow vegetables, I do grow from seed. I completely filled all my perennial beds with plants grown from seed obtained primarily through trades with other gardeners here on GardenWeb. Check out the Seed Exchange forum and shop for seeds you can either trade for or else purchase for the cost of postage. FYI - I traded for seeds, winter sowed them, potted up the seedlings, planted them in my beds once they got some size to them and filled all my perennial beds to overflowing in just 3 years' time, literally for pennies. Primarily I traded for perennial seeds and also harvested and traded seeds from my own plants. I sowed the seeds via the Winter Sowing* method and ended up with more perennials than I had room to plant or could give away. Harvesting seeds isn't particularly difficult but requires patience. The seedpods must be allowed to remain on the plant until they're completely dry & the seeds within are fully ripe. That can be a bit tricky since not all seed types ripen simultaneously. Example: seeds of Siberian iris aren't ripe until some time in late summer/early fall whereas Aquilegia/Columbine seeds ripen much earlier in the season. I harvest ripe seedpods, then allow them to dry for a few weeks in/on paper bowls or plates on stainless steel racks inside my garage. * Winter Sowing is a proven, USDA-accredited method of growing trees, shrubs, perennials, vegetables & annuals from seed in winter. Check out the Winter Sowing forum here on GardenWeb for how to do it and how it works. A neighbor left an envelope in my kitchen door a few years ago that had 4 apple tree and 10 pear tree seeds. The note asked me to grow them for him. The trees are now as tall as I am. Spirea, St. John's wort, butterfly bush, & ornamental dogwood trees are growing in my garden beds, all grown from winter sown seeds. With some exceptions, most things can be grown from seed (minus a hothouse or electricity) given the optimal growing conditions. Winter sowing allows seeds to germinate when the hours of daylight + temperature + moisture tells them the time is right. It's natural and hands the controls back to Mother Nature.

Agree with Jeff and John. Skip the soap and save it for aphids and whitelflies. BT K variant is what you want -- very target specific(caterpillars), organic, and won't harm beneficials. It isn't effective on large, mature cats, but give a weekly spray for the 1st couple weeks and bi-weekly after that. Try to find the big ones and hand pick. Available at any garden center -- thuricide, dipel, and caterpillar killer are 3 names it goes by. Btw, insecticidal soap should be rinsed off after a few hours. best to apply at dusk and rinse in the morning. And like ALL pesticides, should not be applied when the temp is >80F or the sum of the temp and relative humidity is >140. If you find a hornworm that looks like it does in the link, clip leaf off and relocate. Those white eggs will emerge to more wasps to parasitize more hornworms. Kevin Here is a link that might be useful: parasitized hornworm