I just caught onto this thread. May I suggest, for fragrance, a variety known as "Kramers Supreme" a stunning large deep red peony form (not formal double) which is a frequent show winner. "High Fragrance" and "Scentsation" are pink but just as impressive a bloom. I have several of each. You should have no problem finding Kramers Supreme which originated at Kramers Nursery in Upland CA. Another great fragrant bloom is an old one known as "Herme" a/k/a Jordan's Pride in your part of the world, white with carmine streaks. One of my all time favorites. My camellias start blooming around September 1 and go all winter until May, we have some blooming now. I am nuts about them.

For those of you who liked Chama Valley, those are the largest and best flowers I've had on it in four years. CV spent its first two years in a pot, and last year only put up one scape out of five mature fans. This year all the fans have a scape, but bud count is poor (8-11 per scape). In its current location, performance is maginal. Kay - If you really like the seeding, you could test it out for me. I'd be interested in knowing if the bud count is higher farther south. Random Harvest - The seedling does outdo Gilded Knight on branching and bud count, but not Evening Enchantment, the pod parent. The dark baby blooms about a week earlier than Evening Enchantment, which used to be a reliable rebloomer until the neighbors planted trees next to it. So far the seedling has not rebloomed, but it is surrounded by other seedlings and, at this time, only gets about 5 hours of sun a day. My Darling Clementine is a great little reblooming workhorse here. It's never been the earlier bloomer here, but its always in the first 7 or 8 to bloom. Vickie - You are right about Kokopelli's star-shaped throat. That's one of it's many unique features. Your comment makes me think I need to plant more of my Koko seed crosses. Sue - I think you will like Grandma's Smile. A friend had it, and she says it's one of her very best pinks. I would like it better if it didn't have white midribs. Debra

Your Kyushu is a nice looking specimen. Doesn't exactly look like the one I got from Home Depot. That's very encouraging. Did you do anything to get it to be as compact as it is? I mean, like pruning it or training it? I do think I like the Limelight flower better, though. Especially that lime green color. I saw somewhere recently that Dirr was discussing the future of hydrangeas and, of course, he's very enthusiastic. The future he saw was one in which we get more Endless Summer types that bloom for us Northerners and stronger stemmed plants that will replace the Annabelles and the like. On a quest for the perfect Hydrangea.... Thank you for your thoughts. I really appreciate them and they help me a lot. Back to Thread Swerve.... The Oakleaf 'Snowflake' is a most interesting flower. You can see from the pictures that it has this sorta psychedelic coloring that almost gets me dizzy looking at it. I looked at the flowers more closely yesterday and what is happening is that the little sepals (or whatever they are) just keep on coming out of the middle of the last ones. Then, as so many hydrangeas do, the older ones will start to fade to a pink while the newer ones keep coming on as white. And because these flowers just keep on coming, it has a very long blooming season. In my zone, we don't get a lot of blooms from Oakleafs because they bloom from a terminal bud from last year and.... well, that's where I came in...I'm starting to wonder about how I can overwinter these and get them to bloom for me.... And if we get to the perfect Hydrangea, I hope it looks a little like Hay.

I made the same observation a while ago. If you have plants that are budding now, most likely you can cut them back and delay bloom by weeks or more. The author of the "Well Tended Garden" explains in great detail how to do it for many different plants. If you don't own it, go to good bookstore when it is 90 today, and buy it. Then stay where it is air conditioned and read it. It really is invaluable I'm not going to cut back the the first bloom of cone flowers, but I have pinched Autumn Joy back by a half, the phlox by a third, I hacked back a spirea I didn't get to before by half. That was two weeks ago and is completely covered with buds. You can cut back Joe Pye Weed by at least a third, all the helianthus, heleniums, almost anything with multiple branching stems. Really, get out the hedge clippers or use your thumb and forefinger and pinch away. Don't pinch back plants like veronicastrum candlelabra types. They'll grow back with multiple stems and lose their "real shape" hWhat else? Any mums and keep pinching till early July, boltonias, asters, monarda. Don't worry they won't all bloom at the same time. Different plants grow at different rates, so you'll still have a distribution of blooms over time. If this makes you nervous, just pick a few to cut back. Another interesting experiment is if you have multiples pinch back some alot, some less, and some not at all. You'll not only have a succession of color and bloom times for the same plant but you'll learn about the plants' growth habits. Another suggestion: get some annuals that come into their glory in late summer and fall: all those wonderful salvias, which are at their best in the fall. Not the little squatty ones, but Black and Blue, the tall scarlets- a hundred choices. You may not have an excuse to buy annuals like these again in the near future