Yes, Connie, any bloom counts. I've just been oohing and ahing over a quarter-inch flower on the windowsill cactus. Catrose, this is a great time of the year to live in Texas, but when your roses are peaking, ours will be sad, brown-edged crispy critters. I love crocus, too, Kate, but they're something else Dallas doesn't do well. They'll last maybe a couple of years here before deciding it's too darn hot. Molly, how big does Spice get for you? I'd love to be able to shoehorn it in somewhere. I agree, Melissa, that not all zone 8's are created equal. Even the pros here can't grow roses to the perfection that you do, or the lucky folks who in Oregon and Washington. Maybe summer temperatures should be taken into consideration as well. Kathy, Martha G was my first OGR. I went to the nursery to get a Knockout but saw her instead, and that led me to this forum. How lucky was that!

Ah, PTPulley..."HI"...waving vigorously! Actually, I am up on the top down near the south end, but I used to live at Ellisport, right across from you. Come over and see my dahlias when they are all blooming :-) How many do you grow? I have about 190 this year and sell the flowers at my flower stand. Thus enabling me to buy more and more interesting tubers each year Loved your hint on ripping stakes from cedar boards. We are going to try that ourselves. Right now I have a crazy collection of bamboo stakes, metal fence T posts, and bean poles and those green plastic covered metal ones that bend at teh wrong time. How I would like a nice patch with posts all the same size , and ones that won't rot in 2 or 3 years.

What's your zone, saragossaseas? Peonies are full sun plants, especially in the north, but they can benefit from some shade during the heat of the summer in the south. Actually they could probably benefit from some summer shade pretty much anywhere except in the most humid climates. You'll want as much sun as possible until they bloom, though. When you say a beautiful specimen, were you talking about the same as graycrna4u? The Itoh Takara? In my experience Itohs don't get quite as leggy as herbaceous in part sun but they won't bloom as much as in full sun. The flowers will be slower to fade, too, though. Again, if you have a spot that would be a bit shadier in the summer than it is during active growing and blooming that's a good thing! My experience with an Itoh in the shade during growing/blooming was Singing in the Rain rather than Takara. I planted one in a shady spot 2 years after I planted one in a sunny spot; shady spot one was a much larger root. They bloomed for the first time the same year, shady spot one had 2 buds, only 1 made it to bloom, sunny spot had 3 and all made it. Shady spot only increased by a couple of blooms the next year, sunny spot had over 10. I dug, divided and selected a new spot for the shady spot SitR that fall! Good luck with your new peony!

Mike, I've been around. I guess i just haven't had much to say. I don't know how good of a job i have done at fighting the thrips. I found three crawling on the open bloom earlier. Plumygirl, I bought mine as a rooted cutting earlier this year. Some of the leaves are getting huge, I'm worried that it may outgrow me. That pic was in the bright sun. I was able to snap one in the evening light and it looks quite different. I'll post the pic as soon as i get it on my computer.