That is why I liked BEFORE. I HAVE a lot of those extra early small yellows and am tired of them. Wouldn't mind a really extra early that looked like a real daylily :-) But really I am looking for lates and extra lates and wished they had introductions in that catagory.

Hello Bill, I think everything on your list will grow in Las Vegas but perhaps not all will thrive. I tried echinacea because I love those big flowers but it did not bloom through the summer. I also tried the delosperma cooperi and it went away on me. I have had several different kinds of agastaches that I got from High Country Gardens and they grew and bloomed but never looked like thier pictures because the flowers faded in the heat until they were barely noticible. The salvias I have had good luck with and I grow Salvia greggii 'wild thing' that I just love as well as salvia officinalis (edible), salvia farinacea, salvia clevlandii (love the smell), Salvia Pachyphylla (California Native), and Salvia Penstemonoides (texas native), and salvia chamaedryiodes (true blue flowers). I love Salvia microphylla but they have croaked for me when it would get really hot. Guara does really well here and I have the white kind right now although I have had the pink form too. I have had success with some kinds of coreopsis but the threadleaf kind didn't make if for me and I don't grow any of them anymore. I had verbascum which I like but it was a two year plant for me and I like longer lived things. That said a plant genus you should really look into if your after showy flowers is the penstemons, I have penstemon parryi, baccharifolius, triflorus, superbus, and pseudospectabilis. They are great plants for here. A book I just got that is by Mary Irish the former director of public horticulture at the Desert Botanic Garden in Phoenix is called Perennials for the Southwest. This lady really knows what she is talking about so far as what will survive in the desert. Of course what I couldn't get to grow maybe you could, that's just how it works here. Oh, and I do try to put in a fall crop of tomatoes and hope for a late frost so I can get some before they freeze over. Early girl works well. Happy Gardening, Maria

Composting in the Winter in UpState NY Living in Upstate sure creates a problem if you like to compost when knowing we have several months of almost cold dormancy. Like many of you we started kitchen composting years ago with a small 1 gallon bucket. It always worked fine in the warmer weather but in the dead of winter we always ended up with gallons of frozen compost in the bin that took weeks to thaw in the Spring. By the time it was mixed in with other greens and browns and turned into soil Winter was almost back at our doorstep. What I've been doing now to overcome some of that problem and hasten that process came somewhat by accident. One Winter long ago, I left a gallon pail in our unheated 5x8 outerroom walkout basement where it became somewhat forgotten. There was generally about a weeks worth of kitchen waste whereas the bottom was always a little soggy under those circumstances. Then when I remembered the pail a few days later the waste was frozen solid. I couldn't get it out of the bucket. Having a lid I secured it tightly and brought it into the warmer cellar to let it thaw where again it sat harmlessly in the corner for probably at least a good week as we had already started another gallon container. Then when I realized I'd better get it outdoors to the compost bin you can imagine how ripe things had gotten. Because a great deal of the waste had broken down into a slurry this is where I got my idea long before I heard of the Garden Web that has a great Compost Forum. Some might be thinking if this is about Composting put it on that Forum, but then again this is Central (Upstate) New York not Central Texas where they benefit by composting all year long. Hence hopefully this might be a Garden Secret for those who don't go to the Compost Forum and experience the same problem I used to have. So I started Winter Basement Composting on a small scale using two 1 gallon pails. When the first kitchen pail filled I took it to the basement and let it set there 'til the second gallon pail was filled. Then I emptied the first one that was sitting for at least a week or more into the bin. There was always an odor but fortunately our home was adjacent to a park and I would dump either early in the morning or when the wind was coming out the west. I'm sure my neighbors must have thought I was nuts checking out the slight breeze after putting my index finger in my mouth and then either bringing out or not bringing out a bucket. Did they ever realize it was for their benefit :>) It seemed to work so well and plus not having to go out in the cold as often I graduated to two 5 gal pails with lids. This also eliminated the need for having a kitchen pail as I would take whatever was available to the cellar. One pail would fill and sit with the tightly closed lid 'til the second pail was filled. Now with five gallons of slurry I really had to check the wind. Whew! Then we moved. Then we had neighbors on both sides. Whew! What do I do? Shredded newspaper to the rescue. I figured if the slurry could be absorbed the odor wouldn't be as severe, which is the case. Yes! There is an odor but almost minimal and not that offensive. So what I do is shred a section of newspaper and put that on the bottom. Depending on how much waste is available after I put it into the pail I either shred a section of newspaper right then to put on top of that or wait a couple of days. But I always place a whole untorn section of newspaper on the top whether I shred a section of paper or not. It's amazing how much the untorn section at the top absorbs the evaporation, again cutting down on any tell tale odor. Plus it tells me the little bit of heat inside is rising. I fill one 5 gal pail and wait for the other to fill before I dump the first into the bin. The process can take up to 3, 4 or even 5 weeks. Obviously it doesn't break down to a slurry like it used to but it does break down somewhat. If you don't have neighbors slurry is the way to go. But then again indoors like the basement you will get some odor every time you open. In fact by using the newspaper the odor is definitely more of what I would call organic. Another thing I noticed was, when the weather warms I continue to use the 5 gallon pail method by bringing them up to the garage. What I've noticed is after a period of time the material in the pail is definitely breaking down more rapidly because the whole untorn section is more moist and when you lift the section up you can feel the warmth coming from the inside. Why would I want to do this throughout the summer or warmer weather when it could be breaking down in the bin? Good question? And I hope the answer makes sense? Less turning the bin and more time to pull weeds :>). So I hope some one benefits or maybe even has another Garden Secret idea on the way they Compost that I'm unaware of. I'm sure you Wintersower's are glad we're back to Winter, for at least a few days? Jim

Oh my, do you have all day??? This sort of thing happens to me or people I know all the time. That's because there are Newfoundlanders everywhere! I wouldn't be surprised if the Noel family that cherryfizz mentioned had NL connections - it's a common name here. My mom's cousin who lived in Nova Scotia left her husband and children and ran off with another man. We had a baby sitter when I was young who married a Mountie and, in the course of his career, they were posted somewhere in rural Manitoba. Guess who their neighbours were? Yup, my mom's cousin and her man. It was sort of "Where are you from?", "I'm from St. John's, Newfoundland", "Oh, I have a cousin who lives there, Maybe you know her.", etc. I was in London, England, one July years ago and was walking down Oxford Street like thousands of others and I heard someone shout, "Barbara!".. I kep walking because it couldn't possibly be me she was shouting at - I didn't know anyone in London. She shouted again, using my full name, so I turned around and here was a woman who used to play bridge with my mom on a regular basis. I was in San Fransisco and went into a Wells Fargo bank to change a traveller's cheque. The young lady behind the desk asked where I was from. I told her St. John's and she said, "So am I". It turned out that her aunt and I went to school together. I was in Washington, DC, visiting my cousin and her DH and I was outside the Lord and Taylor's store and heard a man with a very unmistakable St. John's accent speaking to two nuns. I sort of sidled up to him and said, "What part of St. John's are you from?" He laughed and said "Coronation Street". (Yes, there really is a Coronation Street in St. John's!). Then he ran to help the two nuns into a taxi and I went into the store. The next evening my cousin had a get-together and who should walk in to the party but this fellow who worked with my cousin's DH at the Pentagon. He had lived in Washington for over 40 years and sounded like he just left home! I had lunch at a nice little restaurant in Halifax in October and at three of the other tables were people I knew from home. As I said, there are Newfoundlanders everywhere. Tens of thousands of Newfoundland girls married US servicemen who were stationed here during WWll and afterwards, thousands left to find work in the "Boston States", and so on. I'll bet that there are people on this forum who know Newfoundlanders, or people who are descended from Newfoundlanders, and don't realize it.