That might have been me, spreading my good ideas (smile)that have me up to me ears in seeds at the moment! OK here's how the big swaps work: Go to the list of all the GW forums, click into seed/plant exchange,then click into something listed as "Round Robin". Listed there are some swaps (even now - but there are more in the fall when folks have freshly harvested seed)) that you send seed to one specific person (the seed swap host) and because lots of other people are participating as well, the host mixes them up and sends everyone BACK different seeds. There are variations...you have to read each swap guidelines, but in general you get back the number of packets you sent in.For example if you send in 5 packets each of 4 varietes, you would be sending 20 packets in and get 20 (different) packets back. Sometimes a host is willing to take "requests", so if you are looking for a specific thing (say zinnia seeds) they will try to send those back, or sometimes you can say "anything that grows in the shade". When the packet comes, it feels like christmas morning! But then, of course, you have this... what am I going to DO with all these seeds if they germinate into plants question! If you are WSing now and grow flowers/veggies this summer - you WILL have seeds to harvest! You will also have lots of questions about how to do this and how to package them, etc. People on the forum are always helpful! Just beware: It turns your winter(sowing) -spring (planting)- summer (tending)hobby into a fall (harvesting and packaging) hobby as well! And remember...you can do individual swap with members right here on WS - just go to the link at the top. Nancy

Two dozen! They'll take over the world!!!! What is it you want to cut down? Are last year's flowers still on there, now crispy brown things? The plant itself only grows a couple of inches high, not much to cut down. They do spread sideways though! I pull off the flowers when they are dead at the end of summer. My plants are well-established and I hack them back mercilessly at any time, but you should probably give yours a little more time before getting too aggressive.

I was searching the internet to see if Darlows Enigma had a patent on it yet. I noticed a question about its history. My former boss, the co-owner of an heirloom rose garden in 01 was propagating D.E. so he was worried about patents and such. He was a very nice man and liked me a lot so we would chat. He and his wife would travel the world talking and purchasing roses and this is the story he told me about the wonderful Darlows Enigma rose that he adored. Supposedly a friend of his, A member of the Seattle Rose Society, lived in an old district of Seattle and would go for walks every morning. He could smell a wonderful rose scent and upon difficult investigation he noticed a large shrub that was growing behind someones fence and under the shade of an overgrown tree. He was sure it was a rose but couldnt identify it from his distance and never saw one grow in complete shade like that. The house was a bit run down and not very welcoming so he kept his distance but was obsessed to get a view into this backyard. Finally he told the rose club about it and they went and investigated. Turns out an elderly gentleman had always owned the home and his wife, that had passed many years ago, had loved her garden and her roses and had planted one of every kind in their back yard. With his sadness he had let her once beautiful yard go to shambles. Darlows was growing next to an old shrub rose and the remnants of a hybrid T. The team took pictures and cuttings, sent them to the rose society using the mans either first or last name. I seem to remember the society was not at all welcoming to DE and finally allowed it to be called a rose. I have no clue if all of this is true this is all second hand and about 13 years later. I always found it to be a sweet story and I adore my DE.

That answers a bunch of questions for me that may help, Pumpkin! I didnt see your sedum picture till after I did that last post! I thought the cut & paste link was the same thing as the one you linked at the bottom! I found the second pic right after I posted last time! I suspect the lower leaves on the sedum are just dying because of transplant shock! When you go out tomorrow, BEFORE you do anymore watering, pull back some of the grass mulch that would be a couple inches past where the soil in the pot was and then take a spade and dig down into the soil to where youd be BELOW the level of the bottom of the root ball that you planted. (BTW, were there roots thruout the entire soil when you planted it in the ground, or did most of the soil still not have roots in it?) If the soil is wet, not just "moist," that far down, dont water anymore. If you find that youve really only been soaking the top few inches, then water slowly by laying a hose right at the base of the plant and leaving it run on just barely a trickle for 30 minutes or more! IF the soil is wet all the way down to the bottom of the root ball, dont water again until the soilthat deepis almost all the way dry! Thats where the part about it being "like a cactus" comes in! Like a cactus, sedum stores water in the plant itself (albeit not as efficiently as a cactus), so if you water it well when you do water it, it takes up a lot of water and stores it in the leaves and stems and can go for a fairly long time without being watered again. Like with almost all plants, if you keep them wet ALL the time, the roots rot, and if anything, sedum will rot somewhat faster than most non-succulent plants, so be sure youre leaving the soil dry most of the way before you water it WELL again. It all depends on your soil and the weather, but you could possibly be going for 2-3 weeks between waterings. After its been watered really well, wait overnite and then feel a couple of the leaves! Theyll feel firm and "full!" It can go without watering until the leaves are actually starting to feel limp and "thin" without doing any damage at all to the plant. One thing, before I forget it! Plants that are xeric arent drought tolerant until theyre "established." That usually means about a year. What makes plants xeric is the fact that they have very deep root systems so theyre able to draw on water thats deep in the soil. So whenever you get something thats called xeric, be sure you water it deeply when you water it, and as it starts to grow, gradually stretch it out more and more between the deep waterings. That draws the roots deeply into the soil (as the surface dries, the roots have to go deep to get to the water) and will give you the most xeric plant possible. Sedums, on the other hand, being succulents, are more-or-less drought tolerant right from the beginningbuttheyll develop much faster and look much better if theyre watered regularly at least until theyre well established. Now heres the thing nobody likes when I tell them this! IF IT WERE ME, Id cut them down to about 2-3" above the ground! I knew you didnt want to hear that!!! ;-) Your flopping stems, based on the experience Ive had with upright sedums, are not going to "stand up" again! You can stake them if you really want to, but as you can see, the tips are already starting to turn "up" toward the light, and if you stake them, theyre probably going to keep looking kind of strange! And from looking at the picture, Id say that the lower leaves are going to continue to yellow and fall off! IF you cut them down, you could cut the tips (about 4") off of each one, remove all but the top couple leaves (about 4, or 2 "sets" of leaves), and stick them in soil to start more plants! (Have you checked out the Swap thread? ;-) ) BUTif you do decide to cut it down youll want to be EXTRA SURE that you dont water it until the soil, at the bottom of the roots, is most of the way dry! When you cut things down and they suddenly dont have any foliage, they use VERY little water till they start to grow again, so its MUCH easier to overwater them than when they have lots of foliage to help use up any "extra" water! So, whichever way you go, dont water on a schedule! Pull back the mulch and check the soil for moisture before watering! By the way, your watering in the pot was great! When you water, always soak things thoroughlyand then dont water again until the soil is at least half way dry for most things. Not just the surface, but the soil down in the pot. And one other thing, just so you know, MOST things wont do well in pots in "garden soil." Sedum will grow almost anywhere in almost anything, so it worked for that, but with other things Id really recommend using a store-bought potting mixanything EXCEPT Hyponex! With the rose! And most of this is still speculation! First of all, it there is a dead cane in the middle (or more than one), cut it out! Maybe when the previous owner staked it, it was still alive, or partly alive! Dead canes just get in the way, look bad, and could possibly promote disease if/when they start to rot, so Id get rid of it. If you had the rose cut that short this spring, Im guessing its a climber! That means youre really going to need some sort of a trellis for it to grow up and be tied to. You could possibly train/tie it laterally along your deck railing, but Im guessing you dont want to do that! And, Im also guessing that its the type of rose that only blooms on "old wood!" That means that youll get flowers next year on the canes that are growing this year, so if you cut it all the way down in fall again, you will probably get no, or very few, flowers next year. But thats just a guess at this point since you dont have too much experience with it yet. So if you want to check that theory out, get a trellis or lattice for it, tie it up, and leave all the canes on till next summer to see what it does! If some of them are getting too tall for whatever you tie it to, cut the ends of them off, but dont cut them all the way down this fall. Next year you can see what it does and decide what you want to do with it. Its conceivable that the "original" rose that was planted there was completely different, and that what you have in there now is a rose that grew out of the root stock below the "graft." The only way to figure that out for sure would be if you could talk to the person who originally planted it and ask them what type of rose and what color they originally put in! Sometimes when a rose reverts back to the rootstock, people like what they wind up withsometimes they dont! Skybird