I will definitely be there Saturday as long as you guys don't care if I bring my 10 yr old and 4 yr old boys with me, mom is out of town. Anyway, I don't have a lot to trade, but I do have quite a few vegetable seeds and a few flower seeds I will bring and I have a few tomato and pepper plants that I started from seed left. Lastly I have a crepe myrtle left over form last year I never found a place to plant. I am not sure what I am even looking for but looking forward to meeting everyone. I like herbs and veggies if you have extras. If not I am sure you guys can steer me what I need. Thanks for putting this together and I hope I didnt hijack the thread.

Here's one of our sad Heuchera with an equally sad hyacinth: But then if you just turn around on the left you'll have a bunch of darling tulips getting ready to announce themselves: and on the right are irises, which look like onions right now but they'll be coming around: Where the boxwoods now are I'd had daphnes, but they were never happy so the helpful man at the nursery and I decided to just go with the boxwoods. The green mounds in back are hollyhocks -- love them! One didn't make it, but the rest look pretty happy which makes me look pretty happy as well! At the base of the (aspen) tree dead ahead are the sad heuchera. A teeny fraction of our daffodils -- aren't they just the happiest flower? I've a few hundred of them strewn across the front of the yard, bordering the sidewalk. Planting them I think I used many, many swear words -- it was so frustrating in this soil! But now that I look at that them I think "Totally worth it!" Hopefully I can remember that when it's planting time in the fall .... The fluffy brown in between them are the ice plants, two junipers (hated junipers when I lived in CA but now I'm grateful for their evergreen nature) and a hole where a third juniper was but a wind blew away. The leggy twiggy brown on the right is a rose. I think grape hyacinths are so darn cute! But I think I made a mistake in where I planted them -- should've been right next to the walkway, where the disappointing heuchera and hyacinths are! (although in all fairness to the hyacinths, they did beautifully last year and I suspect if not for our crazy weather they might've been "better" this year) There are columbines in there as well -- what a pretty flower. Because the tulips I'd planted our first autumn here (first photo) did so well and were so beautiful, I thought I'd plant more. I'm glad I did, and seeing them get ready makes me want to plant even more! And today, as I went out in that biting wind to take these pictures (Li'l Bit's [my two year-old] napping and El Guapo [my four year-old] is seriously involved with his Lego project) I couldn't believe it -- there was a lone red tulip! El Guapo's been complaining yet here one is! I've always loved peonies. Always. I planted three in our front yard but I believe two of them (in a different section) didn't make it. I'm sad. But, when I was out front on Saturday (four days ago) there was the teeniest green nubbin poking its way through the mulch and today it is three inches high! How insane is that? So I'll cross my fingers but not hold my breath about the other two .... There was a horrible wind last summer which ripped the other two peonies and my across-the-street neighbor's large peony got wiped out as well. I didn't take any pictures of the backyard, but the blue mists I planted are all showing their sweet microscopic green leaves. There's one h-u-g-e blue mist in the backyard which we inherited, and it clearly was never cut back. I know you're supposed to cut them back in the spring but it's so big it makes it a bit difficult to tell what's coming to life and what's twiggy and / or dead. So I think I'll wait until it's "back" and then cut out the twiggy / dead parts. After I see what it's doing I'll undoubtedly come back to ask how to get it back in fighting form. Isn't it so fun to see the green poking its way through to show us spring is on its way? I love it!

My box from Melissa arrived today! Inside was a very nice basket full of great stuff! Lots of chocolate goodies, which the kids immediately tried to talk me out of ... don't think so, LOL! Lilac and lavender scented candle Sharpie marker (thank you, thank you, my old one was just about dried up, and I use them for labeling my wintersown containers) Cute little notepad that says "If you pray for rain, be prepared to deal with some mud." (Love it!) Green metal turtle windchimes (very cute) Pair of heavy duty leather palm gloves (Boy did I need some of these! My husband's work gloves are way too big, and regular canvas or cloth garden gloves just aren't tough enough for some jobs.) In addition to all of these goodies, there were tons of seeds in the basket too: Greencrop bush beans Henderson bush lima beans Early Sunglow corn Parade cucumber (can't believe you found one I didn't already have) Poona Kheera cucumber (grew it for the first time last year. They were very large, and crisp, almost melon-like, and a very good producer.) Sakata's Sweet melon (Can't wait to try this one!) Orangeglo watermelon (on my wishlist) Louisiana Green Velvet okra (our nights might be too cool, but I'm going to try it anyway - I miss fried okra!) Burgess Buttercup squash Cocozelle squash (I almost sent this one to you too, LOL) Mini Bell Yellow pepper (Would you believe I grew a Mini-Belle Mix last year, and only got red and chocolate, no yellow, so thank you!) Czech's Excellent tomato (new to me, yippee!) Nature's Riddle tomato (also new to me!) Emerald Evergreen tomato (yep, didn't have that one either) Wow!!! I am so pleased and thankful for the wonderful box of goodies you sent. Thank you very much, Melissa! Bonnie (who plans on keeping those chocolates for herself!)

Some wag said that at International Falls, the water spilling over the falls is frozen by the time it hits bottom - makes an awful racket - keeps the whole town awake and that explains some of the grumpy behavor of the inhabitants in winter.