We had a rare mild winter in north central CT as well when the lowest temp I recall was nearly 30 degrees above last year's lowest mark. The leaves on all my butterfly bushes, both commercial & seed-grown, remained green right through the winter. Here's what Bluestone Perennials says to do: Plant Care: Flowers form on current growth. Should be cut back to 12-18" each spring. Will quickly grow back with many flowering canes. I bought 'Black Knight' from BP a few years ago and it's done wonderfully well. I cut it back to 8-10 inches in spring/March when I see new growth at the base. I'll do the same this year since I don't care to see it grow to massive proportions where it's situated. I see no point in leaving the old growth since it won't produce blooms this season. I grew several butterfly bushes from seed via winter sowing that will also be cut back the same as 'Black Knight' since they bloom on new wood. For me, the whole point in growing butterfly bushes is the flowers that provide nectar that attract the butterflies.

I grow all of the roses on your list. Almost all of them will be bald by mid-summer without support from fungicide. The lone exception seems to be Ralph Moore's OGR. This is its first real year here in the garden and it is one of the few roses that shows no sign of disease so far. No flowers yet, it appears to be one of those late-season bloomers, but the foliage is fabulous. Your decision to go no-spray with your roses is going to have to be paired with a decision on how much defoliation and blackspot to accept. Hybrid Perpetuals, many Bourbons, and most Hybrid Teas will suffer considerably. Will they die from it? Probably not ... but they'll sure look like snort. You're not too far away. Come see me in the garden one weekend, and we'll talk. Connie

This is very interesting indeed! Of course it is possible that a rogue seed found its way into the pot. Darcyi has hybridised with microphylla and the pleasant result has been Silke's Dream. I took seed from Silke's Dream 2 years ago and got 2 interesting plants. One was like a vivid orange greggii...with small lime-green leaves, yet to be named, as really nothing that special, the other had huge pale pink flowers, and is a vigorous upright plant, it has been named 'Penny's Smile'. This could be a great introduction, but can only be truly propagated from cuttings. There is a photo of this on my site www.robinssalvias.com 3 years ago, I sowed some seeds of S.patens 'Guanajuato'...good germination, but one seedling was particularly vigorous and obviously not a patens. I grew this and it turned out to be a stunning form of S. guaranitica. This flowered all summer long, and grew to 6 ft in a short time. The foliage is different from other guaraniticas, but the large flowers seem to be the same. This has proved to be fairly hardy, and has not set any seeds. Sure, I may have had a guaranitica seed stuck to my finger which fell into the patens pot....but somehow don't think so, as I did not collect any guaranitica seed that year! But, it is a fabulous Salvia. I very much doubt if patens and guaranitica would hybridise....they are from different countries.....but I have heard that the Italian Salvia viscosa has hybridised with a South African species! Also, some marvellous hybrids from South African species have occurred in New Zealand and Australia. There seems to be no end to hybrid possibilities, even though botanists are rightly searching for true species. Recent trips to Mexico have found numerous hybrids of littae/purpurea/iodantha, not to mention many different forms of polystachya, carnea, and myriantha. Only professional botanists can positively identify these plants. Other great hybrids are Salvia 'Waverly' and more so, Salvia 'Phyllis' Fancy'...the latter being superior. Waverly has pink flushes, and Phyllis has blue/lavender flushes. Both are supposed to be children of leucantha and chiapensis. I can see the resemblance to leucantha, but the chiapensis parent confuses me. Is it possible that the two alleged parents could produce hybrids with completely different coloured flowers? I could go on for hours on this theme, but don't want to bore you all, probably already have! Robin.

Lyban, I'm sorry!! I absolutely love the floors, though I'm already wishing we'd sealed them (I think this will pass as I add furniture, rugs, etc). Unfortunately none of the pictures are very good so far, but here are some anyway. So, approaching hte basement, before you'd have seen really nasty old linoleum with dirt ground in and shiny dirty-looking paint Now you see fresh flat white paint and new charcoal carpet. The new basement floor is visible, but pretend you don't see that yet! Walking into the basement, before there were dirty dark shiny paneled walls (I don't even have any pictures of those), a moldy old dropped ceiling, flourescent lights above gross old panels, and dark brown vinyl tiles that were releasing from years of neglect. This represents a halfway picture, with older paint, the dropped ceiling removed, and new lighting. Then we painted the ceiling flat black (the subject of this thread, of course!), painted the walls bright flat white, and replaced the flooring with diamond-set white and grey vinyl tiles (the commercial stuff by Armstrong). The pictures of the new floor aren't very good...we don't have any of the new furniture we're planning to get and frankly I'm not even sure what I want. So I am definitely open to decorating ideas...I'm thinking charcoal couch, huge area rug (perhaps an accent color?), and a loveseat or additional chairs. Even now, as I sit here, we've placed some of the furniture--TV, our one chair, and the exercise stuff, but I dare not take pictures because DH finally has his TV back after almost 1.5 months! Laundry room main living area, with furniture all pushed to the middle (this was right after installation) To sum up, this is what's happened over the last 6-7 weeks: 1. ripped out old/moldy/disintegrating/incompletely installed dropped ceiling 2. installed can lights (removed old, in some cases nonfunctional, flourescent tubes) 3. painted the unfinished ceiling black (huge ordeal, involved moving almost everything upstairs and then taping off all walls and remaining items with thick plastic sheeting before renting a gigantic power paint sprayer...) 4. demolished huge, old, smelly, dusty-----but surprisingly (and unfortunately for me, the demolisher) well-built!----plywood/particleboard/pegboard/wood closets 5. ripped up nasty old floor tiles that were coming up and breaking into small pieces all over the place (thank you victoria---horrible job); we then lived with nasty black mastic for almost two weeks, until #8 happened this week. 6. Had an asbestos-wrapped copper water pipe professionally removed 7. painted old dark shiny paneled walls flat white, including the stairwell walls and ceiling. 8. installed new VCT tile and base molding, and carpeted the stairs with charcoal-colored carpet