I went to the post office this afternoon and Santa was in there!!!! And I thought I was seeing double� My mom is burwoodbelle and she received her Secret Santa package on Tuesday of this week I called her just now and she and I are going to open our packages on Christmas Eve together here at my house.. My Secret Santa is resting under my Christmas Tree for now. It�s going to be a long week, but the wait makes the surprise so much sweeter.. SandyL

BurlwoodBelle, My husband takes a 2 lb. sledge hammer to them. He pounds each one on a piece of steel he has sitting on the garage floor. He then drills a hole in the handle with our drill press. Anytime I send silverware it is usually hammered and drilled.

Hello Brooke 28 I placed an order from Paradise Gardens in the spring of 2010 and I was more then pleased with my order.. See my order at this link.. Copy and paste the link to see my clematis from Paradise.or enter my name sandyl in the search buttom above to see all my post.. They have all done great and I'm very please with them all.. I had ordered Huldine and its not really turning out to be everything I was hoping for, but its still very young and can only get better I hope. The blooms are small compared to all my others. I'm very pleased with Barbara Harrington, she's been blooming since early spring and currently has 6 blooms now. I have three SAC and love them but the bloom time is just so short, 3/1/2 weeks and the blooms are gone, but the smell is wonderful. I have more then 23 clematis total and as you will see in several of my post you can't go wrong with Ramona, I didn't get Ramona from Paradise Gardens but she is a must have. You will see Sprinkles and Ms. Bateman in several of my post and Sprinkles is about 6 years old and I like it more and more each passing year, Sprinkles is a group 2 and I hard prune it after its spring flush and right now it has 6 blooms and is over 8 feet tall even after the hard prune I gave it early July after its first flush. And Miss Bateman is beautiful in the spring as you will see but she has only had three blooms on her rebloom this fall. She had probably over 100 in the spring. You also can't go wrong with a Jack. http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/clematis/msg041620449106.html Sandy

Much to my surprise, my pistachio (horwack) did bloom this year! I got it in late April 2014 as a small but well rooted cutting in a 3.5" pot-- due to the size, I wasn't expecting any blooms this year. It only produced one flower, however it has grown really well once I moved it to a shadier area-- I'd say it's probably around 18 inches wide and a bit over a foot tall? I've enjoyed seeing the changes, and I have pictures of how it has changed with time. I would have enjoyed seeing a sequence of how each bloom matures when I was trying to determine which varieties I'd like, so I thought I'd share them here. I noticed broccoli in late July/ early August. Buds started opening and were very green on August 8th. he first hints of pink started showing on the most mature flower on August 12th.They looked very "tie dye" at the end of the month (the picture taken on the 29th was right after sunset, that's why the colors are darker and more cool). Here's a picture from today, the most mature blooms are almost entirely pink, and the inner buds from each flower are starting to open. My soil is basic, and there's no hint of blue anywhere in the flower right now. i think it's a really attractive plant and very eye-catching, the foliage is lovely too! In my opinion/ on my screen the colors are pretty true-to-life and it looks like what I expected from pictures. I've seen comments to the effect of "I thought from pictures it was hideous, but I liked it in real life!" I think it's a really neat looking hydrangea, but it looks exactly how I anticipated from the pictures, so I wouldn't suggest buying it if you hate the pictures (or at least look at it in real life first). Mine is definitely pink/ coral, not red.