if you are in the hot summer areas like Phoenix or further south, the best time to plant would have been last week of Aug or first 2 weeks of sept. but, if you still have them get them in right away, as they will need all the time they can get before the summer burns them up. Also as the temps get hot mosaic will all but kill them. Beans do not usually keep well into a second season. You could try holding them until Aug./Sept '09 but I would not hold them past that.

Barbra, are you lower (higher?) on the zone scale than I am, like maybe 9b instead of 9a? I yank mine back a little every so often, but it's pretty easy. Got it from someone who got rid of all of hers fairly soon after she gave me a piece because she had a limited space she wanted it in. Mine has a little more room. Comes out easily, and does freeze pretty easily. It had started back into growth but I'd bet it's down now. It is very tropical-looking and I kinda like it, but I have mixed feelings about it. Takes really heavy shade. That's certainly a plus. Come to think of it, I should plant it at the top of the coulee out back where the bank is slipping down and where it's really shady. It'd probably hold the bank.

We all have that special plant we're attached to. Mine is the CB. I grew up with parents that love gardening and have always had beautiful, perfectly manicured gardens. As a kid I had no interest but I obviously picked up a lot of how-to's by osmosis :) What turned the tide for me was one trip to the tea gardens here in town 15 years ago and I saw the CB. The flower fascinated me and I just had to figure out what it was. That is what lit my fuse so to speak. When my parents moved back here last year, what do I get them? A CB of course! A bit overprotective I think. Anyway, from now on, starting in early spring I'll start watching the leaves like a hawk looking for eggs and any signs of little brown entry holes. I know they didn't overwinter in the stems because it all died back with the freeze and I had removed them all. The interesting thing is every single problem spot is at the tip of the stem, right before or just after the last full leaf, even on long 6' branches. I think I'll hatch some praying mantises as well. Won't my wife love that! Honestly it helps just knowing about them and knowing to keep an eye on it more. I guess things are never a problem until they're a problem eh.

Went with the baked beans... They ended up looking good, smelling good and apparently they tasted good, hubby ate them all... He didn't even notice that he only had about 2 oz of meat on his plate... LOL My biggest problem in cooking beans was that the skins always came off, you'd get a mouthful of skins and your next mouthful was mushy beans... Looks like just simmering them solved that problem... One of the things I learned today... You just can't hurry beans and have them come out right... When I replied to my post I said the skins where starting to split and the beans were still hard and not more than 10 minutes later the were soft... Guess it took longer to cook them because they were old... As I said, blowing on the beans, to check for doneness, didn't work for me but that might be because of my cigarette breath ( lol )... The other thing I learned today, you can not hurry old beans... LOL As for a recipe... I didn't really follow one, sorry Shambo... I just did a search for baked beans and added the things most recipes had, onions ( I used dried because hubby won't eat anything with fresh onions or any kind of garlic ), brown sugar, molasses and something with tomatoes... In fact the only thing I measured was the tomato puree, I used the Hunt's, which has 100 mg of sodium in a 1/4 cut so that's all I used... Oh, when I started cooking the beans I added about a cup and a half of pork stock... Last week I used the meat, minus the fat, from some country ribs, for something else, and made stock out of the bones and bits of meat with the fat, cooked it all down, picked the tiny bits of meat off and added it to the strained 'juice' and stuck it in the freezer... Just before adding it to the water, for the beans, I scraped off the hardened fat... Rita