Gardengal, I think you've just hit on a very important aspect of selling plants... the display garden. The helpmeet works for a garden center and they don't have one. It's terribly difficult for him to "convince" someone that, yes! the Baptisia will attain 4' and it will need a lot of room, or that the Epimedium will spread slowly and steadily to create a lovely, bullet-proof groundcover. We too, live in a pretty garden-savvy area and while I have to travel between 20 and 75 miles to visit the places that carry the really "choice" items they ARE available. Moreover, the places I regularly haunt are very receptive to suggestions and actually appreciate them. I watched their stock go from the basics to really very comprehensive and rock solid hardy for our area. Lacy., wish you were closer I could give you a generous shovelful of Epimedium rubrum today... :(

Great pictures, Markiz37! Nice to see Pink Intuition can be so beautiful, even if it doesn't grow or bloom as much as its red counterpart. Kathy and Susan, I actually feel better in a strange way at hearing Hocus Pocus might be the same as Memphis Music. I feel better about not having been able to buy the former. So maybe that reverted Memphis Magic I seem to have is actually the reverted Black Beauty I was curious about. Or if not, at least is indestinguishable. Makes me think of some other roses that are commonly mistaken for each other: like the floribundas Nicole and Hanna Gordon; the HT Barcelona and tea Francis Dubreuil. Or what about those body-bag roses at Walmart or Home Depot with pictures and printed descriptions that look identical to well-known varieties but which are being sold with names I can find in no database anywhere? Hmm.... sounds a little suspicious to me. I have yet to buy any like that. I have a hard enough time dealing with somebody giving me a gift rose without a name. I have a pathological need to know what I'm growing. "Yellow rose" just is not good enough. lol I wish I could afford (space and money both) to order duplicates. I actually don't have more than one of any single rose I grow at the moment. Maybe that's living dangerously. But my yard is so tiny. I try to partially compensate by giving rooted cuttings of some (older ones of course) to friends and neighbors. That way, if one of mine meets an untimely death, I have someone I can mooch some cuttings from. I couln't recall the names of my failed Careless Love striped rose the other day. It didn't die, just never had any stripes. Now I remember it's from the Radiance family. But I still not sure if it reverted back to Radiance or Mrs. Charles Bell, supposedly a subtle shell-pink version of the Radiance roses. Anyway, it's sitll growing happily in front of my next door neighbor's home. Mike

I keep skipping around photos, so I'm going to put them together here in one post, easier on my income tax-strained eyes! ;D The one from "much older German hunting dagger" link above is closest in appearance so far. Here's what the seller says about it: "German Hunting dagger with lions head pommel. Circa 1860-1880. 14" blade and 20" overall. Stag handle scabbard is very good with some surface age cracking but very solid. This one looks like it was actually used as most were for appearance. $995.00" If the above description is correct, and based on appearances of other WWII daggers & swords seen, I'm wondering if the one you have is not older than WWII era, or at very least not married to the scabbard it's in. Because a little detail that's been bugging me is the way yours sits in the scabbard compared to the one found so far closest in appearance. If you look at the old German Hunting dagger, the sheath only goes up to the clamshell guard. But yours, when in the scabbard, the lion's head rises above what appears to be a belt loop? Just a tad, but it's still above it. If it is indeed a hunting dagger, as the handle would lead one to think, picture someone wearing it out in the woods, attached to their belt. Thinking of all my hikes and hunts in the woods back home on the farm, climbing around rocky stream beds, up almost vertical terrain, wooded hills, maneuvering around thick brush and trees branches, it doesn't take much for something worn on the body to get caught on something or bumped and poke into the wearer. So the closer and snugger to the body the better. So if someone were carrying your dagger on a belt, hiking, mounting or dismounting a horse, would that not be slightly awkward, making the lion's head a bit...floppy? Just enough to be inefficient and annoying to the wearer? Almost (but not quite) poke into the wearer's body, especially when bent at the waist? Or that little bit of lion head sticking above could be just enough to catch a branch, or tangle in a thicket of briars. As is, would it force the wearer to stop every few yards due to a tangle? Or place a hand on the lion's head to hold it snug to the body when bending or walking in dense woods? Would it not be more functional/comfortable for the wearer to have the lion's head sit lower and therefore more snugly in the scabbard, versus protruding that little bit beyond the top of the leather scabbard loop? I could be going way too far into left field on that one, but it just makes me pause just a bit and wonder if your dagger and scabbard are actually not a married pair. Here are comparison photos: Old hunting dagger: Yours: Older hunting dagger Yours Yours has a collar at the base of the lion's head, where the other has nothing. I can't tell from your photos, looks like something is engraved on the band between the hooves, above the clamshell? Is it oak leaves and acorns like the comparable one?

Late in the day response, but the photo is confusing. I thought the leaded glass was part of the piece. I'm guessing 18th Century French Louis XVI Style Demilune Console With Marble top. Hope you bought it.