What a great event, the park was huge and well shaded under the ancient oaks. The vendors were all busy, the selection and variety was amazing. The company and the journey was as usual the best as alway. I had a wonderful time. GINNY it was great to see you and DH you look fabulous. TONY...I'm so sad we missed you...I was looking forward to seeing you again. Terrie The three crazies you met today were Butterflygardener, Coffeemom and myself MsMarion. It was wonderful to meet you. I hope to bump into you again. I do hope that sweet lady was OK. Do you think it was heat stroke? Cindee you have to mark this event on the calender for next year. We'll make a weekend of it. Marion

Hello all, just got this update from them: WOW! It seems I am deluged with emails and phone calls. Let me first thank all of you who have sent good wishes our way. It is truly appreciated and totally unsuspected. Both Linda and I thank you. There have been many common questions so let me try to answer them for the benefit of all. If you have sent a previous email and this does not answer your questions, please send me a new on and I will try to answer. 1) The Foxfire line of hostas will live on through the wonderful initiative and cooperation of Bill Silvers in Conyers, Georgia. He has many in tc as we speak and more in the pipeline so the plants will become available in the future. Palm Sunday is looking good in TC as is Night Skye. There are a few more that will be new to you also. Foxfire Green Lantern, Foxfire Irish Moon, Foxfire Night Skye, Foxfire Off Limits, Foxfire Sidewinder, Foxfire Shadow Dancer will be available as liners in June 2010 with more to follow. Palm Sunday may be a little later. 2) I cannot mail order at this time and do not think I will be able to in the near future, but I will keep all of your addresses available and notify you in the future as plants you may be interested in become available. Who knows exactly what will happen in the future so we will just have to find out together. 3) Concerning availability of hostas for sale prior to Saturday: I extended an offer the past week to hosta groups and wholesalers of buying any ten or more hostas for $10 per plant. It has been well received and I extend that now to any of you who might want to come before Saturday due to scheduling problems. I feel in fairness to all there not be early sales at the $5 price. That way everyone has the same opportunity come Saturday at the lower price. You may certainly come earlier in the week and look things over, but the gate will open Saturday at 8:00am sharp. We will have additional help so check out will not be long or complicated (we hope). It should be rather fast and easy math and we will designate an area beyond checkout where you can bag your plants at your leisure for transport home. 4) For the big plants in the grower area, breeder area, and display area it is a bit more complicated. I think a minimum price of $3 per plant for the first 1-3 eyes and then $1 per additional eye up to a maximum of $25 would be fair. You will have to dig and cut off leaves (I will have some extra knives) but I will assist with pricing for easy checkout. 5) Hostas will not be sold that are in the Garden proper--only the ones down in the retail area. I will 'rope' off any 'no dig' zones (Wally's Garden) with yellow caution tape. There! I hope that answers most of your questions. My emails keep coming in as I write. Thank you my friends for your kind words. Sincerely, Steve

Those photos are beautiful. No concrete, no asphalt, no sidewalks, no urban blight. No Starbucks. (I have never been to a Starbucks as we don't have any of that stuff around here.) I understand coffee costs $5.00??? But the heat is a problem for me though. Some love the heat, but I absolutely hate it. It went to 87 degrees up here last week end the kids were jumping into the rivers to cool off. That night it went down to 42 degrees and we all slept comfortably. But the responses are quite interesting. Some believe that God meant for man to walk on concrete and nothing less will do. Others will never consider living in a suburban, let alone urban setting. Some will never leave the seaside, while others think all you get is a shack there. Some believe people literally living on top of each other is the way to go and others think that anything less than 5 acres is confining. Some talk about having fine stores nearby to buy things, while others have no need for more "stuff". I love northern New England. I love when the leaves start to change in mid September and reach their peak around Columbus Day. I love the lack of urban areas. The biggest town in Vermont is Burlington with under 40,000 people. I love walking down my dirt road on a snowy evening in December and smelling woodsmoke in the air, knowing families are gathered around the hearth. I like the fact we have no streetlights. But there are plenty of people here that would consider my lifestyle backward. That's what makes this country so wonderful!

I am so envious of you folks with ReStores! Since this is a very low income area there are a lot of junk shops, I can pop a spare backplate and the small rosette (since it needs a matching key escutcheon that wasn't on that door) into the glove compartment. Unless I'm really stuck, I'd prefer to avoid the architectural salvage guy down where I used to live because he is viciously overpriced - like $100 for a single doorknob that was one of about 50 matching ones, not exactly rare and unusual - and very disorganized. I may take more photos and scan rubbings and send them to some other places that sell old pieces and offer hardware matching. Kim, right this minute we're in the "this sucks this sucks this sucks this sucks i hate this house will someone please shoot me NOW" mode because it's slurping down money like a kid with a frappe - milkshake, that is. Between last week's and this week's disasters we're expected to hit $10k, all "WTF??" expenses, not the expected ones. We were counting on having additional expenses, but we were expecting to have some proceeds from the other house to buffer them. Right now I have a plumber (overpriced franchise plumber, but my regular plumber doesn't have the right equipment) downstairs snaking tree roots out of the sewer line, since we had a huge backup last night. We're also extremely peeved with our home inspector for how many things he completely missed. flyleft, we've already been up in the attic and down cellar to find absolutely nuffin in the "If Walls Could Talk" genre. I found traces of a hideous "country blue" wallpaper in the master bedroom - PO painted right over the electrical outlet plates and stuff so if you take the plates off, around each receptacle is a little border of blue wallpaper. Around a defunct cable outlet (no cable attached to it anymore) I tried soaking and peeling some back. No, it's stuck right on there something fierce. So, when we get to that room we'll sand off all the paint boogers and drips, spackle and feather off the seams, and then either skimcoat and paint or put up wallpaper w/liner. *gasp* DH is much more amenable to wallpaper in this house, since it "fits the house", as long as I choose monochromatic or unfussy patterns like most of Bradbury's "Morris Alternative Fills" line. But that's a ways down the road: we need working sewer, properly working electric, fully working heat, etc. before we get too far into "pretties". (I admit I have spent a little bit on "pretties" though: we got wood blinds for the LR because keeping DH in clothes is extremely difficult ;-) , rods for my cheapie eBay curtains, slipcover for my wonderful new couch which people were fighting over last weekend, and a couple of cheap secondhand furniture pieces. I'm still looking for a mailbox and the mailman is getting a little irritated with us!) We do believe that the large brass chandelier in the dining room is either original or very close to it - it's heavy as all get-out, can tell ya that much. If we take it down it'll be hung up in the attic wrapped in sheets for safekeeping. I did pick up, at a yard sale, two antique pan chandeliers: one looks very much like Rejuvenation's Belmont. The other looks sorta like this. I paid $15 for the pair. KGW had a chandelier restored for a surprisingly low price, I think at JF PeGan; I'm thinking about sending them over and seeing how much a complete restoration would cost. The little two-light would go beautifully in the entry. I'm not sure I like the large one as well, maybe I'll have it restored and sell it (depending on how much the restoration goes of course).