Hi all, My first plant was an African violet. My grandmother was at fault. It was 1979 and I was about 23 years old and in college. I decided I would like to have a house plant and went over to her place to get some pothos cuttings. She grew wonderful looking pothos like nobody I've ever seen since. Anyway she was really thrilled that I was interested in having of houseplant and cut me several good lengths of pothos stems. When we were done with that she took me over to the window and showed me an African violet. She told me that I could take one of those leaves, put it in a glass of water, and that it would grow new plants from the base of the stem. I thought to myself, "no way", but I took a couple of those leaves home, stuck them in a glass of water as she instructed and indeed after couple months little plantlets started to grow from the bottom of the stems. I then planted them in African violet soil and had two plants. I soon took more leaves and started even more African violets. I thought it was such a coup how I was able to produce these "free" plants. Although by the time I bought the pots and soil those plants were not free. lol I then started propagating other plants. I even grew a lemon tree from a lemon seed I had harvested when making lemonade one time. My surprise was that the thing had thorns. Even though I liked my plants I can say that I was really in love with them. That would come later. I graduated from college and married a girl who was in ROTC and went into the army six months later. She was immediately sent to different schools and we traveled around the country to three different places in less than a year. Keeping plants going under those conditions was not very good and I lost a lot of plants, but not my African violets. I wound up in Washington, DC and worked for what was pretty much a white collar "sweat shop". It wasn't uncommon for me to work 60 to 70 hours a week. I needed somewhat of a diversion occasionally though and I found that diversion to be houseplants. I was very lucky to share a corner office with a couple of other people. The sunlight was incredible, and the windows were tinted so that the sun was not too harsh. I bought several starter plants and had them around my desk. To make a long story short I had a spider plant that was just magnificent and I had a Swedish Ivy that was to die for. The Swedish Ivy hung from a 9 foot ceiling and was basically a pillar all the way to the floor. I could not get my arms around the circumference of the plant. Anyway that's when my love of plants really blossomed. I continued to purchase and propagate African violets and had several to give away. My wife, who would eventually become my ex wife, and I moved to Denver. I then became acquainted with other gesneriad cousins of African violets. I went to African violet and gesneriad shows annually and met several people who grew these plants. I love all of my plants but my first love is African violets and their gesneriad cousins. Larry

two cycle nut....I am glad to hear that your renovation worked well and that weeds were crowded out by KBG. I probably haven't seen enough to really say for sure, but if I were betting, I would say that the average renovated lawn will not be able to crowd out weeds for quite some time and that some use of weed killer will go a long way to helping things move along. I walked over to my neighbor's new KBG lawn today (renovated in the fall), and I absolutely couldn't believe the difference in just 2 weeks. I declared war on the weeds, and it appears that the grass has spread into most of the areas where the weeds had died out. The only bare spots that he has are where some animals went to work and dug out large holes early in the spring. When I renovate next year, I am going to use weed killer in the same way that he did. I enjoy fertilizing organically, but my new policy is "hybrid" and I'll cheat whenever necessary.

LOL I live in zone 8 and I still start them babies in the house. I may try my hand at doing a few seeds as Jan did this past year. That's how I do my pro.'s, just snap them babies off and plant them next to their mama's. I figure this will make the clumps bigger a lot faster. Jan, my daffs are up and blooming too. I have several beds that are full of paperwhites and the smell will knock you out it's so strong. Ed, I'm so glad you have some more of your seedlings coming up. If you need more space I'll grow some seedlings for you here....if you supply the seeds are small plants. I'll keep photos and records and anything else you would need are want. But I would want one start of each seedling for my own use in my flowerbeds. LOL Well I've got too many irons in the fire right now, I've got to go plant a few more crosses I just got off the L.A. I wish someone would breaker the curser on my computer so I couldn't get on there. Each day I say "I'm not going to buy any more seeds" Each day, I lie to myself and go ahead and click on SOMETHING ON THERE.....lol Berrytea4 me, I sure would like to have a couple of Blue Spruce seedlings to try to grow here. Even if it is too hot, I'd like to try. Do they come up wild there like our pine trees do here in the Piney Woods of East Texas? WE need some new pictures of everyone's seedlings. I don't know how to put them on here or I would. Please don't anyone offer to teach me how. I've tried before and I'm HOPELESS. Happy Gardening and lots of beautiful daylily babies this summer.

Speaking of a curse... I've been having strange trouble with scarlet runner beans. Last year, a friend told me about how lovely they were and asked if he could plant them where they'd grow on my fence. I said yes and he put an entire packet in the ground, along ten feet of fence. He planted them in April, way too early (I didn't realize what he was out there doing until he came in and announced he was done). Most of them rotted in the ground. I assumed they all would and started to dig up the area in May. I discovered that three plants had made it, but one was already nibbled to the ground by a rabbit or other critter. In digging up the area to plant other stuff, I accidentally killed another. The last one struggled for a long time and eventually produced three beans. Only three. So this year I planted those three beans. All came up. I accidentally bumped one and it freakishly broke in half and died. Another had the growing tip damaged (I'm not sure by what) and never made it. The last grew slowly... so slowly... and produced three seed pods. I zealously guarded these pods against husband and children, reminding them every time we picked beans not to pick THOSE pods. Leave them be, let them ripen. Last week I cleaned out all the other plants growing on that fence and cut down the sunflowers, etc. I didn't have time to do it neatly, so there were a lot of stragglers. We had a house sitter over - the same friend who had wanted to plant the scarlet runners in the first place. We were in a hurry when we left and I didn't give any specific instructions about the garden (not that I'd even thought about it). When we came back and I was unpacking, I saw my garden basket near the door had four bean pods in it and one was a scarlet runner pod! I asked him, "What happened to the other two? This was on a plant with two other pods." He said, "What? Oh, well, the other ones didn't look very good. I think squirrels got at them. I threw them away." I have a bad squirrel problem, but I've grown beans for two years and I have yet to have a squirrel (or anything else) eat the bean pods. Hoping the squirrels had only chewed on the pods and there were a few seeds left, I asked where he'd thrown them away. He said the trash. So I looked. All I found was carefully hulled pods, hulled by a human. When he saw that I was looking, he said, "I just threw the beans out. They were kind of dry and hard." This is a nice guy. Were it nearly anyone else, I would suspect malice. But he's dumb and nice and well-intentioned. I took a deep breath. "Okay. Where did you throw the beans?" He said (and I'm not exaggerating or kidding here), "Just out in the back yard. I was hoping a squirrel or a bird might eat them... I'm sorry." I bought a flashlight (my old one was dead) and searched. I found three. This morning I found two more after carefully raking the area where I'd found the other three. That's probably all there were, as they weren't big pods. There are three beans still in the pod that was in the basket. I imagine that he thought he'd help finish cleaning off the fence and noticed a few bean pods. After that, it's sheer human perversity and the absurdity of life. Was he bored and decided to shred the pods, then tossed the seeds when he was done? If so, why carry the hulls inside to put in the trash? Did he think that the dried out pods wouldn't make good snap beans (I haven't grown dry beans so he hasn't seen that)? It's just weird. Plain weird. It's not a big loss to me, as I could just buy a packet of seeds and be as well off, maybe more. Plus the scarlet runners are apparently very accident-prone and don't grow well where I'm planting them. But it was bizarre that after two years of coddling, most of my seeds get tossed out so "a squirrel or a bird might eat them" by a well-meaning helper.