Marie, the best advice I can give is to first buy Lynn Byczynski's book The Flower Farmer if you haven't already. A lot of what you will need to know is in there. Another good book for reference is Specialty Cut Flowers, by Armitage and Laushman. Second, keep in mind that you don't have to jump into it whole hog the first year. You can start small and grow bigger each year. At least that worked for me. Though I made very little money the first couple of years, I learned a lot. Third, work hard on a planting plan. This is the hardest part for a lot of us. You don't want to find yourself in early August having run out of one planting of something, say bachelor buttons, without another planting ready to harvest. It's better to have some go to waste because you couldn't sell them all, than to not have them to sell. Also, read all the old posts you can in this forum. There is a LOT of great info here. Good luck with your venture and ask questions here all you want. This forum isn't what it used to be, but most questions get answered eventually. ThinMan

... was made when I was about nine years old. The previous year, my very wise mother had purchased a house that had two back yards: one in the front that was the same size as the average yard on our block, backed by a huge, overgrown Laurel hedge; and through a gap in the hedge (defined by a broken rose trellis), one in the back which was "the kids' yard", in which my brothers and I could joyfully dig all the holes to China we wanted. The northeast corner of our yard had been a compost heap for years. My mother assured me this would be the best soil for a vegetable garden; so I enlisted the help of all the other neighborhood children to help me dig up all the sod, spent all my allowance for weeks on bags of manure and seeds, and managed to grow a lush patch of Nasturtiums, some wonderful peas, and a watermelon that reached 1" across before the slugs consumed it whole. I also unwisely planted a rose in the shadiest corner of the yard, where it bloomed nevertheless -- but sparsely -- a few years later. My lack of success was very discouraging, so I gave up on gardening -- although I still enjoyed helping my mother care for her flowers in her well-manicured flower garden. In my teens, I began to foray into the world of houseplants. I had a friend who was very gifted at caring for and propagating houseplants, and soon I had enough donations from his jungle to start my very own living room conservatory. That was the extent of my gardening for many years, until my first husband and I bought a home shortly after the birth of our daughter. Housing prices had just begun to skyrocket, so we could barely afford a home at all -- but we bought the best house we could find, a solidly-built two-bedroom, c. 1927, on a lot that measured 50x60 feet. Our total yard area was a 40x25' fenced area plus a 12x20' unfenced strip of lawn in front of the house. One day about a week after we closed on the house (in mid-October 1988), I stood looking out the living room window at our tiny yard. "Is this really ours?" I asked my husband. "Yes," he answered. "I can do anything I want with it, and no landlord can take it away from us?" "Yes you can," he answered. "Nobody can take it away from us." "I think I'm going to plant a garden," I said. The next few weeks, I went a little crazy. I bought bulbs: ten of this, ten of that, a bag of those mixed kinds, a dozen of these... Soon I had over 300 bulbs to plant (maybe more), it was the end of the season, and I didn't even have the beds made yet! I gardened all that winter, with the baby strapped in a pack on my back. I set up lights so I could work into the evenings as the days grew shorter. (It wasn't uncommon to see me still digging at midnight, when the baby was safely tucked in bed under her father's watchful eye.) I don't know how I did it, but I got all those bulbs in the ground, in beds that were deeply dug and richly fortified with manure and bulb fertilizer. I was determined that THIS time, my garden wouldn't fail to thrive! So all during the dark days of winter, I planned... I read books and learned about loam and zones and soil testing and plants. I made lists of flowers by color, height, and bloom season; I read plant encyclopedias cover-to-cover, marked interesting entries, and then read them again. I pored over seed catalogues and ordered seeds. Soon I was also buying propagating trays, and three cheap industrial steel shelves to line the south windows of our house. I grew everything I could from seed, because I knew we wouldn't be able to afford to buy many plants in pots. In early February, my grandfather's will finally came out of probate, and I received $2,000 as a bequest. Grandfather had loved his garden in Modesto, so I knew he'd be pleased if I put his bequest to good use in my own garden. I bought lumber for the grape arbor. I bought paving bricks (the old cobblestone kind that are fired and weigh 10 pounds each) for the pathway and the patio under the grape arbor. I bought more seeds, more amendments, and ... oh, yeah, for $5 we bought a cubic yard of "chicken-n-chips", composted chicken manure and wood chips. Oh, Chicken-n-Chips! Well, such a deal! Enough amendment for my entire garden, all for only $5! The catch? The catch was, we had to pick it up and haul it home ourselves. So we borrowed my parents' VW van, took out the back seat, and lined the passenger area with plastic tarp. We put our daughter's car seat in the second back seat, just behind the tarp, and we drove twenty miles into the country to the address shown in the paper. When we arrived, the gentleman took our money, looked dubiously at the VW van, and said we could haul away all the Chicken-n-Chips we could carry. Then he pointed to the pile... There it was... the biggest mountain of hot, steaming sh*t I ever hope to see in my life. There were little flies buzzing joyfully around this source of warmth and nourishment. Wisps of steam rose from it in the brisk February air... And the smell was unbelievable. We cheerfully lifted our shovels and began our task. As we shoveled more and more of the malodorous cr*p into the passenger compartment of the van, our tiny daughter began to grimace in shock and dismay as the smell reached her nostrils. When she realized that her insane parents were going to continue filling the van with this stuff in spite of its obnoxious smell, she whimpered softly. We drove the van home on that cold day with the windows wide open all the way. Then we unloaded it into our driveway, carefully peeled the tarp out of the passenger compartment, wiped everything down, put the seat back in, and returned it to my parents. They were never the wiser. My very first flower garden that year nearly caused traffic accidents in front of our house, as drivers would slam on their brakes to gape openmouthed at our tiny yard that overflowed with flowers. Love, Claudia

I was getting all ready with some smart-alec comments... until I saw the topic wasn't what I thought! :) Considering I drive for work, I guess I'll have to quit or get fired before I can stop driving. Yes, gas prices are making an impact on income. I sure feel the pain of truckers. $800 to fill their tank and I suppose sometimes they need to fill a couple times a day, or maybe more. And planting the crops will be far more expensive. I went to mow the lawn the other day. Thought I'd have to make a special trip to the gas station to fill the gas can. So I decided to fill them both. When I picked up the second one, it was full! YEAH! That's like finding a $10 bill these days! Used to cost $2-$3 to fill the can. All to mow dandelions. Might be better off to blacktop the yard.

IÂm happy to buy more fabric  and to tell the truth, I donÂt really have enough of anything (except the brown) to finish the quilt without buying more. So IÂll definitely be taking the top to a fabric store to make some purchases. All of your comments are extremely helpful for when I do get to the fabric store. Unfortunately, that will probably not be until next week. IÂll be sure to keep you updated and IÂll post pictures when IÂm done. I agree that too much pink is not a good thing  I have started thinking about the quilt as "Pepto-Bismol" and that is definitely not a good thing, so I think I need to avoid too much more pink (if I use any more at all). Some of my favorite quilts have a lot of white in them, but when I put the white-on-white next to my quilt it didnÂt do a lot for me, but IÂm not ruling it out, I think IÂm just having trouble "seeing" it. Thanks again to everyone who took the time to comment. This is very helpful. Lola