I've never paid much attention to classic (or new) HTs at the box stores, of which they carried quite a few, but our local HD carried several OGRs when I still lived in the US. In my first rose growing year in the US, not knowing any better, I purchased one Reine des Violettes, two Rose de Rescht, two Comte de Chambord, one Sombreuil and one modern, Altissimo from them. All true to type except for Sombreuil which turned out to be Cl. Iceberg, certainly an intentional mislabeling. Only one, Altissimo, was clearly virused, as it turned out in its second year. While it performed very well, it couldn't hold a candle to the, I'm quite sure, non-virused Altissimo I bought the next year from DA and planted right next to it. In later years, I had the impression that Reine des Violettes might have been virused too, since some leaves on one, only one, of its lowest branches showed a pattern that could have been RMV, but it wasn't an entirely clear positive. I am not sure about the claim that an RMV infection may not even show at all, not even faintliest. To me such claims sound like "guilty by default (or association) without proof", and as a historian, I have problems with this kind of approach. However, I know that biology (which I've also studied way back then) is not politics or history, and I'd like to see some scientific literature on this. Jeri, do tou have anything at hand? Thanks, Andrea

Gary, One thing to keep in mind with orchids at the big boxes is many are, for the money, a better deal than buying cut flowers because they last so much longer. I do that, knowing that I know very little about keeping it alive or getting it to rebloom after it finally peters out. I just stick them in the boot of the palm tree out back and once in a blue moon fertilize them. And several have died out there, but one rebloomed for me recently. I felt like I doubled my money on that little very common purple and white dendrobium. I do the same thing with the little broms with the spectacular flowers (or whatever brom's non-flower flowers are called.) After several weeks, the flowers die and I plant them in the ground. I've had several of those rebloom too, and I'm even bringing pups and big divisions to the swap. They're not fancy, but for the $8 I paid, I got a lovely flower in the kitchen window for weeks, and if I get more, wow, yippee! I also think the orchids make much nicer hostess gifts than showing up with a bunch of cut flowers. If the hostess can't keep it alive to rebloom, he or she will at least get to enjoy the nice spray of flowers for much longer than cut flowers will last. (so when you see me at HD, don't bother to counsel me on my brom and orchid buys... just all the other stuff I might buy and potentially kill or hate!) As for the in-store kills, I saw a massacre in the making yesterday. Someone should go to the K-Mart in Miami Shores and convince the manager to sell them all the broms and orchids for cheap. They lost the shade covering in Fay and everything there is burned looking and won't last much longer. I thought about talking to him or her, but I don't know enough about orchids to think that even if they were heavily discounted, I could keep enough of them alive and get them to rebloom to make it worth it. susannah

In my college days I worked at sears and back then they pointed out that their Kenmore line, or even Craftsman tractors were made by another company BUT to Sears specificatons...which were supposedly superior. That may have been the case then...likely not anymore! I never heard of Sharp making a model microwave for Sears and the same one (looks & features) but with crappier parts for WallyWorld. That sounds like a lot of overhead to make various models of the same microwave to different specifications for different stores...only to get a bad product reputation. I do believe manufacturers have different tiers of products and you will find cheaper product lines in WallyWorld, cheaper and moderate lines in Big Box stores and those plus more expensive models in Appliance Stores...if you can even find an appliance store anymore. I do believe that sometimes a Big Box will have a special version of a product that differs in no meaningful way from another BigBox. Ex BigBoxA sells a dehumidifier that comes with a hose...BigBoxB sells the same dehumidifier but theirs comes with a fragrance filter or something. This is more done to make it look like you are getting a better value than WallyWorld or to cover their butt on proce matches. Just my opinion...

I take forever to do most things, especially when spending money, since I only want to do them once with no regrets. I met a gal from a local kitchen place at a building show, and made an appointment with her to discuss the kitchen for my new house. It became very apparent that she wanted to zip through everything, and she was on a commission. I had an appointment with a kitchen designer at the lumber yard we used in our build (professional, but not very personal), and spent some time in a couple of other local kitchen design businesses (one never got back to me, and the other wouldn't let me look at the cabinet catalog on my own). I then went to HD, where I could make as many appointments as I needed to make up my mind, get printouts of the design and a detailed price list of every item every time, and I never felt rushed. We'd used a different HD for an earlier kitchen remodel (I had to keep checking the order, since at the time their old computer design program had some defaults it kept throwing in--also, the gal kept getting interrupted because she had to answer the phone several times, so that probably caused some of the mistakes). But answering the phone seemed to cause interruptions for kitchen designers in every place. My son used a 3rd HD when I helped him remodel his kitchen, but he used a local flooring place nearby. In all 3 Detroit metro HDs (and a Lowes), I'd spent a fair amount of time wandering around the kitchen department overhearing the salespeople working with other customers, So I knew who the knowledgable salespeople were when I got ready to choose the ones for us. Long after each kitchen was finished, these salespeople would still stop and have a brief friendly conversation when I was in their HD. At the non-HD places, I don't think anyone would have recognized or acknowledged me again, because they were always too busy. It may sound odd, but my 3 big box people seemed more neighborly (not a requirement for a kitchen designer, but nice nonetheless!), in spite of what you might expect to be an impersonal large store. We got all of our appliances at HD, because they were the only place that had the new GE induction cooktop to look at when it first came out (I never did see it at our local high end appliance stores), and we got a great price on it, plus a GE discount on the rest of the Profile package. We did use 2 different local businesses for our countertops, since both had been recommended by people we knew, and they both had lots of choices that the big boxes didn't have. We used a local flooring place, because they had choices of every cork manufacturer, and let me bring as many samples home as I wanted to! No other store could match this. They cost more, but we were willing to pay for the service I'd gotten. Bought the door/drawer pulls at Restoration Hardware. Bought the tile from local stores. So, in a nutshell, I looked at everything every place, but choice, service, price clarity, and the ability to take my time and look at everything, comfortably without feeling like I was using a salesperson's precious time, determined where I bought all of my kitchen things. Anne