I ordered from Peaceful valley /groworganic.com before. I had pretty good luck with their bare root fruit trees (cherries, pluots, and a nectarine). They all looked pretty good-sized 3/4" or so. All leafed out just fine. However their return policies are pure trash. If anything goes wrong with your tree with exception of not leafing out you are out of luck. They will not take back anything if it leafs out and dies within a day or two. They do not cover disease in the first year. etc. The currants I bought from them died within a couple of months of planting and they basically said that they will not cover it after it leafed-out. Their prices,trees and quick responses are good but this single fact of crappy return policies and not standing behind their product after leaf-out makes me double question myself about ordering there again.

I dunno. I've had good luck with their cherries at least. Our Minnie Royal and Royal Lee trees have settled in nicely. I was a little concerned since the trees had already broken hibernation probably due to their low chill requirement but I needn't have been I guess. The trees were nicely pruned and had good calipers too. Admittedly one took longer to acclimate but it may have been due more to my planting technique than anything else.

"I couldn't ask her to stay in a hotel. That just isn't done in my or my husband's family. It would be very hurtful." More hurtful than letting her destroy your husband in HIS own home? Just because something hasn't been done in the past doesn't mean it isn't time for a change now. You're putting your mother ahead of your husband--that's a situation that you will regret sooner or later. When you marry, the person you put FIRST is your spouse. If your extended family cannot respect your marriage, then you have to make some changes. I'm sorry--in this case, you seem to be bending over backward to enable your mother to hurt your husband. At every turn, I'd have handled things differently. First, my mother wouldn't have been in the delivery room with me--that's a husband/wife event, that should NOT include other family, IMO (I realize not everyone agrees--just expressing my feeling). Especially if my husband and mother didn't get along, and I knew it, there would have been no way my mom would have been invited to that event. Then, if she dared bad-mouth my husband at that point in time, I'd have insisted she be removed from the room. I absolutely would not have listened or played referee. And no way would I EVER let any family member (mine or his) make my husband uncomfortable in his own home. I have a rule that I've taught my daughter well--if the person is someone you wouldn't normally let in your life as you met them as a stranger, there's no reason to cowtow to them, merely because of an accident of birth. You've got to decide--which is more important? Your mother or your husband? If you continue to allow your mother free rein, she's GOING to destroy your marriage--which sounds like it's what she wants. Or you can be the adult here, and let your mother know, in no uncertain terms that you love her, but you aren't going to allow her to hurt the others you love. Make some rules, let HER be the one to make the decision. If she violates the house rules (NO criticizing your husband, even behind his back)--then it's HER choice to stay at a hotel next time around. Let her know up front, she's welcome to visit as long as she knows how to behave as a proper guest, but don't feel a bit guilty if you have to put your foot down--I really think that foot may be the step that saves your marriage in the long run.

In 1965 my husband to be and I stayed two weeks in the Hotel Royal Bretagne at 11bis rue de la Gaîté in Paris. Years after I read in Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs that she'd stayed in this hotel for several months in 1937, commuting from her teaching post in Passy. She describes it as a very decent hotel and it still was in 1965 and also in 2000 when my husband was given a room there purely by chance when he attended a conference. A room then cost much more than the 17 francs we paid and was much improved. On this same visit we looked at the nearby Hotel Orfila in rue d'Assas where the Swedish author August Strindberg experienced the psychosis he described in his book Inferno. Another literary place I've actively sought out was Jane Austen's Chawton in Hampshire, on our way from Mottisfont Abbey. We arrived too late to see the inside but the outside loo was open, to our relief. The greatest disappointment was the long detour we made to Little House in the Big Woods near Pepin, Wisconsin, where we had hoped to show our children Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood home. It was a shiny new replica with hardly a tree in sight. 29 years later it looks more weathered in internet photos.