Hi Alex, " I'd certainly be interested in finding an adaptor that worked! I guess I'll have to look into it all again, unless you can backtrack and give me the links other than Wiki that told you about those adaptors. " Well, I think there is a really good chance that the adapter I originally linked to would work. I'll repeat the link here. It is the Fotodiox Lens Mount Adapter, Canon FD, FL Lens to Nikon Camera, for Nikon D7100, D7000, D5200, D5100, D3100, D300, D300S, D200, D100, D50, D60, D70, D80, D90, D40, D40x, N70s, D80, D800, D800e, D4, D3, D2, D1, D300, D300s, and D200. You can read the product description and then read the 26 customers reviews that Amazon has published for the product. Amazon has a good reputation for letting you return a product if it doesn't work for you or turns out to be defective. With no hassle they let me return a telescopic sight for a rifle that didn't live up to my expectations. I think if that adapter didn't work for you that you could return it. "I swear I looked at all that stuff, and had been convinced the adaptors wouldn't work, but I'd love to be proven wrong." Well, at the time you checked, there may not have been an adapter to use Canon FD lenses on Nikon SLRs. That adapter includes compatibility with Nikon D7100, D7000, D5200 cameras, which are relatively "late model" cameras. And almost all the lens adapters on Amazon are designed to adapt Nikon lenses for use on Canon cameras. Only the one I linked, and another that was out of stock, were to adapt Canon lenses for use on Nikon cameras. "Wait a minute, maybe it's the macro-lens I should be checking..." You should verify that it is a Canon FD or FL lens, and that it is in serviceable condition. " I have a scanner that will scan negatives, and I had them develop the film, but not print it, since I could save it digitally from the scanner." Impressive. So you also can extract digital images from all those old film negatives. I have an old Epson Perfection V750 Pro that can scan transparencies or opaque material. A good many years ago I bought a Stereo Realist camera and took a bunch of stereo slides. I have scanned a few, and made large prints from them for my sister, but I should take the time to scan a bunch more of them. It has three selectable scanning resolutions, 4800 dpi, 6400 dpi, and 9600 dpi. The higher the resolution, the slower the scan. And I use the maximum resolution on my stereo slides, because each side of a slide is only 23 x 24 mm. Not much to work with. Fortunately, Kodachrome is almost grainless, and I can get decent 8x10s from a stereo slide. I have some software (onOne's Perfect Resize) that could let me go bigger, but I haven't tried that yet. I have been thinking about getting a beam splitter for my Nikon D3200 so I could take some 3D pictures with it. And maybe some 3D video. It would be "cool" to take some 3D footage of a wooly worm eating away at one of my zinnias. Maybe not. My zinnia gardens have a surprisingly diverse ecology, with a lot of opportunities for close-up photography and videography. More later. ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)

Wilson, "I will keep the seeds to see what happens next year. If it is a new strain, what do I do with the seeds?" Good question. That depends on how many viable seeds, if any, this current specimen produces. If it doesn't produce any viable seeds, that will be that. If it produces a lot, and you grow a whole bed of marigolds saved from this mutant, you may very well see a whole range of variation in that bed, including some specimens even stranger than this one. You will have the option of picking your favorites from those specimens and saving seeds from them. By that time your curiosity may be sufficiently whetted so as to experiment with cross-pollinating some of your mutant specimens. It took Burpee many years of running the contest for the nearest-to-white marigolds to get commercial strains of "white marigolds". I raise zinnias as a hobby, and dabble at breeding them, and whenever I see a mutant zinnia, I save seeds from it and frequently I will cross it with other interesting zinnias. I don't hesitate to save seeds from hybrids, and I will cross hybrids with other hybrids. This hybrid-of-hybrids zinnia was somewhat "different". That zinnia reminded me a little of a giant dandelion flower. I liked its looks, although some people might reject it as "un-zinnia-like". I tend to agree with the saying that, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Your mutant marigold is standing head and shoulders above the marigolds around it. Its tree-trunk-like stem could help it resist damage from strong winds. Who knows what its progeny might look like? It might be an "ugly duckling". ZM

Hi Alex, " I can't even get into the garden! There's a heavy pile of snow/ice gluing the gate shut. " Clearly you have a much more arctic climate in Michigan than we here in Kansas. The top few inches of our soil have thawed, although it is still hard frozen a few inches down. I am hoping that our soil will thaw some more this week, because there is an area of my garden that has a lot of rocks in it that I want to rake out before planting it. Right now the rake teeth just sort of "bounce off" of that still frozen layer. Incidentally, you have mastered the "blockquote" thing quite well. There are a couple more HTML things that are easy to use, and handy sometimes. They are "b" for bold and "u" for underline. In these examples, as before, I will use square brackets to indicate the HTML, and let angle brackets, which you don't see, cause the actual execution of the HTML. Sometimes, [b] if you want something to stand out a bit [/b], you can use the "b" command, and [u]if you really want to emphasize something[/u], you can use "u" to underline it. You can [b][u]combine the two[/u][/b] if you want, or [I][b][u]use all three [/u][/b][/I]. There is another HTML command, the "font" command, that is somewhat more complicated, and somewhat more capable. You can use it to [font color="red"] change the color of your text,[/font] but I don't usually have a need for colored text. Incidentally, there are an amazing number of colors at your disposal. I just picked red because it is a simple example. You may or may not have noticed that I used the "font" command to change the typeface of this paragraph, up to this point. I used the [font face="Georgia"] command. Most, perhaps all, browsers let you set a default typeface, and this forum itself probably controls its fonts as well. I sometimes enjoy diddling with details, but I hope the phrase "the Devil is in the details" doesn't apply to me. Back to the weather, we are having a nice sunshiny day here. I know your weather will improve and sometime this Summer, when I am sweltering in three-digit heat, you will be much more comfortable. More later. ZM

Hi Sam, " I'm partial to the cactus zinnias..." Actually, so am I. I am not a big fan of the "classic" zinnia forms like dahlia flowered and similar kinds, in which the petals overlap closely like shingles. I like more informal open flower forms, and the Burpeeana Giants are a good starting point for me. I personally refer to some of the cactus zinnias that have narrower somewhat curved petals as chrysanthemum flowered, and if the petals are narrow and straight, I refer to that as "spider flowered". I like it that you can "see through" the spider blooms, because of loose placement of narrow petals. I found that you get some spider flowered specimens as natural variants right out of the packages of Burpee's cactus flowered strains. Some specimens from packets of Whirligig zinnias also have an "open" flower form that resembles the "spider flowered" flower form. I made many crosses between spider flowered specimens from packets of cactus flowered zinnias and selected specimens from Whirligig zinnias. Some of the results had very subdued two-color effects, but good flower forms. The Whirligigs are actually derived from an interspecific cross between Zinnia violacea (elegans) and Zinnia haageana, so they have a lot more natural variation than other zinnia varieties. They have helped me obtain several new flower forms, including one that I refer to as "aster flowered". The aster flowered zinnias are large with mostly straight petals that are long and narrow with fairly loose placement on the flower cone. Some retain some bicolor coloration, while others are mostly solid colored. They have an extremely large variant (7 inches and larger) that I refer to as "dinosaur flowered" for want of a better name. Whirligig parentage has also been instrumental in producing several other flower forms that I refer to as "daisy flowered", "dandelion flowered", "toothy flowered" (that one needs a better name) and an extreme fantasy variation that I refer to as "Medusa flowered". You could post your pictures here, but we are kind of "hijacking" Weedy's message thread here, so you could join the message thread over in the Annuals forum called It can be fun to breed your own zinnias. It is now up to Part 23, and the previous 22 parts are accessible by links in those messages. They go back several years. The advantage for you to post your questions, comments, and pictures over there is that you will have the opportunity to get responses from people other than myself. It always helps to get a second (or third) opinion. I hope to see you over there. We could discuss your cactus zinnia breeding plans. ZM