Rita - One full zone certianly does make a difference! Seems like we are almost exacly one month appart on bloom times, and probably 15 degrees different in temps. We really only get down to about 20 in the winter and up to 115 in the summer (whew), with 105 being a sustained temp for weeks at a time. ACK! VELVET EYES had done super well here. Strong grower, multiplier and bloomer. That said, the branching and budcount could use work. I went out just now to count (because there are 11 scapes still on the small clump - and I already pulled off at least 4 others) and I found the highest # of bud scars was 21 and the lowest was 9. Most of them had 14 buds. Not great, but sure are lots of scapes. Only top branched for me too... Debra - I was REALLY surprised when JENNY BUTTERFIELD bloomed so many times. I don't remember reading about anyone having rebloom on it... much less, double rebloom (if that's what it's called). CHINESE WATERCOLOR also surprised me - the first scapes were still blooming the last blooms when I started to see new baby scapes popping up. PALACE GARDEN BEAUTY - well, this plant is a wierd one. I have two clumps of it growing in the same bed - BUT, one clump rebloomed and the other did not. The one in full sun is the one that didn't rebloom! The other one is one of the plants being taken over by my knock-out roses. I have been keeping them trimmed off the daylilies, but poor PGB gets a lot of shade. I was surprised when the shaded one was the one that rebloomed. Maybe you need to trade its place with JENNY BUTTERFIELD! :o) I have not given up hope of more rebloom when things cool off here. Texas has wierd growing seasons - we get two. One in spring and one in fall. Once things cool off a bit, I usually see more scapes popping up.

Tom Swift and His House on Wheels ~~ Howard R. Garis or Edward Stratemeyer (some controvery exists about who exactly penned the series)

Annpan - you asked whether I had ever seen the Mapp and Lucia TV series - no, but I have heard good things about it... Does the series stay quite close to the story? I happened to find a title the other day which I am having an extremely hard time to put down. It was published in 1955 by author Brian Moore and has the appalling title of The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. It's the story (fiction) of a (maybe) middle-aged (definitely) unmarried woman during the 50's in Belfast. She becomes enmeshed with one of her fellow boarders at the house where she lives, and, at the same time, is fighting really hard to keep part of her life secret. Really excellent read. She's not a particularly likeable character, but she stays with you. Reminds me a bit of Stone Angel's protagonist in some ways. And it has little to do with bodice-ripping type passion. BTW, just found out that there is a sub-category of bodice-ripping romance books focused on the Amish crowd -- called "bonnet-ripping".... :-)

Thank you. This thread has kept me from the gardening and a possible bee sting. I see many old favorites and more exciting, new authors to try. One of my favorites not listed is Robert Van Gulik, Dutch, world reknown expert on China, son of a diplomat I believe and wrote about Judge Dee in the Tang dynasty. Warning, one book has descriptive scene - 'drawn & quartered' for a mean malevolent being. Was Nevada Barr mentioned? Her lonely ranger, Anna Pigeon, works in the natl. parks. Rarely have physical locales' descriptions stayed with me as strongly. I can still go back to the depths of Lake Superior or the Anasazi cliff dwellings. Perhaps a bit on the dark side.