Dear Renee: Happy Birthday, even though it is one day late! Guess what? You are not alone - far from it. Please Google Ontario Horticultural Association. Once you enter the site, click on Societies and then go to Ottawa - there you are! The Ottawa Hort Society has over 300 members and they are all crazy for gardening like you and me! They meet every month and the next meeting is Jan 24 with a talk (and slides) on gardens in Ireland. I myself am a member of the Manotick Hort Society. We have about 130 members. The goal of most societies is the exchange of garden information, plants, seeds, cuttings, also learning more about gardening, holding plant sales (where terrific bargains are available from the gardens of the members) And this year is VERY special because the Ottawa Society is hosting the 100th Annual Meeting of all the Hort Societies in Ontario. This will be a huge 3-day gathering of gardeners from all over Ontario in mid-August. The best reason for attending a meeting of a garden club (or Horticultural society) is that you get to meet wonderful people who love gardening. Some of my best friends are people I have met through my garden club. So Renee, hope to see you at a garden club meeting soon! Your cuttings, your plant offshoots and extras will be welcome come about May when sales are held!

Hi Everyone, I have been 'offline' after a major computer crash...but like a weed, I'm back! The weather is 'iffy' for Sunday. Looks like rain but Sat looks good....I am hoping the weather does what it has been doing to date - not following the forecasts!!! Calagary has sun all week and quite often we get their weather by the weekend - so I am not giving up hope. What do folk want to do? We need to make a firm decision on FRIDAY EVENING - I WILL POST ON FRIDAY for the weekend. All of those attending - please email me through my members page - I would like to make a distribution email to everyone for Friday evening so people know exactly what is going on. I will also supply my phone number via email only to registered members so you can call me if you are not sure what is going on. RAIN OPTION WOULD BE TO HAVE THIS ON SATURDAY IF THERE ARE ENOUGH PEOPLE INTERESTED. (You would have to go on without me! Sniff....) Please email me this week so I can ensure everyone knows the details. Cheers, McPeg

LosLunas: No luck at Walmart, though a stocker said they did often have them. Gorgi, I don't think the seeds out of Newtons would germinate, having been baked. I have plenty of space and I thought I might try your dried fig experiment just for the devil of it if I could find dried figs. Tell us how you planted the seeds, how deep, what kind of planting medium, etc??? It would just be a "for the fun of it" experiment; I want to get trees that will bear soon with no fooling around so cuttings are as far as I can stretch it. I've got some figs on order now. Ox

I had planted some Grandpa Ott's about 8 years ago and they were still coming up where they were planted 7 years later. If they come up this year it will be 8 years they have returned so that should tell you something.