Here is a day pic of it. I still need to paint the heart. And the light fixture gazing ball. And I bought all this stuff for $3 dollars! There was a sale at the hospital gift shop. We have a really great gift shop in our hospital. I love this forum, because I've started looking at things (junk) differently! You guys have some amazing ideas! I'm slowly working my way through the posts.

Some commercial growers of European roses import budwood, not bare root roses. The danger of soil borne pests are thus greatly reduced. The growers also comply with import restrictions. If you read some of the rose books from the very early 1900s that are available on google books now, you'll see that the number of roses imported was tiny, compared to the massed production of today. The early American Rose Annuals have some numbers. Other importers keep the roses in strict quaranteen as must individuals who import. If a rose supplier were to buy bare root roses from other producers for immediate resale (which might explain why some roses are sent out in fall, others in spring) there is no way in heck that the rose supplier would know if the roses they are reselling are true to name or not. They would be dependent on the care taken by the original grower as well as tag loss/loosening in transport. I do know that for at least five years the Cressidas sold by Hortico weren't Cressidas but included at least two other roses.

Veilchen, I got an email from you on the 5th of April acknowledging receipt of the Redstart pepper seeds, but nothing after that. With respect to the peppers, it must be something in your soil, or not in your soil. Our garden soil is fairly sandy and well-drained. Do your peppers get full sun? We had a bountiful crop of peppers from only three plants. Peppers definitely can do well here in Maine. Of course, the killing frost ended their productive season. But the day before the frost, we harvested all the good ones and it amounted to nearly half a bushel of peppers that had accumulated after the previous picking. The plants were loaded. We have been picking and eating peppers all summer. Lots of stirfrys. Some in salads and some in slow cooker dishes. A few found their way onto pizza toppings. I'm optimistic about the zinnia cuttings. I do have a 3-shelf fluorescent light setup in the little computer room where I am now, and it can accommodate as many as 12 standard 11" x 22" trays. With its heavy duty 5-inch casters, it is 75 inches high. I have two additional chrome wire shelving units in our breezeway that I can press into service as the plants grow larger. Each chrome wire shelf is 2 feet by 4 feet. I have four shoplights over each shelf and the fixtures on the top shelf are overdriven for the light equivalent of 12 fluorescent tubes for just that one shelf. Overdriving increases the light output by at least 50%. Thanks to them, this room is very well lit. I took 8 trays of cuttings, which should be enough to start with. It appears that those that I took two weeks ago are now rooting. I'm still keeping them under humidity domes until they develop better root systems. I lost a few to bacterial rot, but I am now combating that successfully with Physan 20. I'll be applying a few lessons learned next year. One lesson is: when you first take the cutting, rinse it in diluted Physan solution to disinfect it immediately. MM

My problem is that the evening primrose is mixed in with plants that I want to save, so I have been weeding by hand and losing the battle. I received some beautiful pink yarrow from a friend who was dividing up some plants and there must have been evening primrose mixed in. I have been battling this plant for two years now and it has moved around to several different beds and is overtaking many plants now, including my yarrow. It grows around the bases of rose bushes, which are so thorny and thick, I have a hard time weeding them out. It pops up in the middle of my thyme and sneaks under the fence where it quietly bides its time. I would resort to RoundUp if there weren't other plants that I want to save, so I have been trying to hand weed them out. But THEY KEEP COMING BACK! It seems every year there is a garden thug that I'm fighting with--first black-eyed susan, then sweet autumn clematis, and now this pretty little pink flower. I know I've read that if you keep cutting a plant down to the ground it eventually gives up and dies out, but I don't know that it would work with this--plus they are everywhere! I'm feeling a little discouraged, since I weeded them all out last fall and I can see them popping back up throughout the beds already. Any suggestions?