I'm not sure what advice I may be able to give to you rockstonegarden. I'm just going to start with a ramble... Take for instance, Taxodium distichum Mickelson... ok, I can propagate this tree with no royalty charge. ...It also goes by the famous known name: 'Shawnee Brave'. I use that name and now I have to pay a royalty. Someone (it is possible) will buy one of your propagations (from wherever...) and then simply calls it anything they want and now it's being propagated under two names. It's a dirty trick, yes...... This is just an example. 'Mickelson' however was the first name chosen for "Shawnee Brave" - in this particular case, someone "stole" from the original name to make money on a plant already being propagated. This above example was the furthest thing in my mind, so I've chosen to start with the lesser important information. Patents - all that stuff - you probably won't see a dime for 10 or 15 to even as far as, 20 years. I've heard this from old-time grafters as well as a very prominent Author in North America. This is the reason: The time it will take you to get this tree out and being sold and where you make your royalty as well as "all the hassle" of patenting a plant - you'll have already starved to death, waiting... it's really that simple. If you chose not to try to make money, you could get that plant sent around to more grafters who in turn get the plant in peoples gardens. The objective of beautifying peoples gardens. Now I'm just going to say this..... nobody has asked you how long the yellow color lasts - there are already so many spruces that flush yellow, available, that the market is flooded. And there are a lot of good ones too. One quick example before I go to my last thought to actually help you if you are bound and determined to proceed with patenting it is this... a nursery friend who grows Picea pungens in the field finds as a well averaged #, 1 golden pushing seedling per 100,000 seedlings. This year I think he found 4. Here you go... I might look at Buchholz & Buchholz Nursery for your propagation TM/Patent needs. They describe themselves as 'finding the most unusual plants from all parts of the world'. Boyko Nursery in Oregon - would be "my" first choice, though. I don't even know them personally, but I've heard so much good about the guy... and that's exactly what they do... you might consider a simple "growers contract" with one nursery such as them - Good luck. Dax

way back when i farmed for a living we saw an ad in the catalog that we ordered our baby chicks. we ordered a dozen straight run araucana chicks. and paid 50Cents each plus shipping. which we thought was expensive. But once they started laying pastel colored eggs in green and blue and pink and tan. we were real happy with them and we sold the extra fresh farm eggs. everybody wanted the easter eggs! I set up a incubater in the celler and hatched out lots of eggs and also traded eggs with a friend who also had the chickens too. to have a bigger gene pool of chicks. a few years later i was taking 12 dozen eggs to work each week and always had requests for more, i got a promotion at work and gave up farming to move to another town to work. in the ads in the sunday paper this week i saw an add selling baby auracana chicks for $3.00 each.

An extra large egg has about 4T of content and a large egg has about 3 1/2 so if you use 5 large eggs you'll be over by 1 1/2 T. You could stir up the eggs in a measuring cup and then dip out the excess if you want to be exact. Or you can just use the 5. With the cake mix I doubt it makes that much difference. Go with whatever is most comfortable. You can use a yellow cake. It will be less lemon-y. Or you could use the optional lemon extract for the lemon boost. Carol

Finally!!! The successful eclosion of Polydamas Swallowtails!! I had the first 5 butterflies of 14 chrysalides emerge today. I am very excited. These were all raised on Wooly Pipevine. I tried raising several cats I found on A. trilobata and they all died. I'm thinking cats on A. trilobata can only eat the very young maroon colored parts of the plant. Maybe this is the case until they get much older and bigger. It seemed introducing the more mature green leaves of A. trilobata even at the 3rd instar was too toxic. Not sure. I will have to do more work on this. I'm just very happy to have all these Polydamas chrysalides and now butterflies from A. tomentosa (Wooly Pipevine)!!! :) Anna