1. Yes that's Liberty. It's unmistakeable.
2. It's probably Dream Queen, although it could also be Thunderbolt. They are very similar.

My, that Azalea is certainly pink. Does it have any foliage?

Steve

DQ and Thun.. are TC's off of GExpect's .. but with the heavily increased green.. or lack of white i should say.. they should be much more vigorous.. unlike that piece of carp ... GE ...

ken

Thank you, Steve.
Ken, I have no idea what you are trying to say. TMA (this stands for Too Many Abbreviations)

Also, IEYSL?
Christine

Dream Queen and Thunderbolt are tissue cultures off Great Expectations....but...or...they...unlike..Great Expectations.

Further translation - those varieties were found when they were tissue culturing Great Expectations. (Tissue culturing is kind of like cloning.)

Ken's caps key is broken, by the way.

Now, what in the world deos IEYSL mean?

bkay

bkay, thank you for the translation. I'm guessing that most posters on this forum are hosta enthusiasts. I'm just a gardener, and I don't know the lingo.

As for IEYSL, I just made it up. I was feeling a little grouchy over Ken's enigmatic post. I had just spent about a half hour googling GExpect an TC, and got nowhere, and was wondering if you had to learn some sort of code to fit in on this forum.

Christine

Feel free to ask if you have any questions. No, you don't have to be a hosta geek to join us here. The problem is we'll make a hosta geek out of you, too, if you hang around for a while.

Ken drives all the newbies nuts, but he's very knowledgeable, generous with his experience and has an extremely dry sense of humor. He will grow on you.

Welcome to the forum.

bkay

Christine,

That's a special language they speak in Adrian, Michigan. It's particularly ineffective on red headed children.

Steve

"It's particularly ineffective on red headed children."
Steve, don't know the last time I laughed so hard.
Thanks for your humor.

OK, OK, now I will 'fess up, at the risk of offending Ken. I did make up IEYSL, and it means, 'Is English your second language?'

And I don't know what the red headed children comment means, is this part of the hosta geek code? Does Ken have red hair? Does Steve have red hair? I don't have red hair. Do the majority of hosta people have red hair? Do some people thrash their hostas? I'm lost, but that's OK. This forum may be fun, after all.
Christine

Oh, oh, now I get it. S L O W on the uptake. As a newbie, I'm the stepchild. BTW (an abbreviation), I have BH (brown hair)
Sigh.
Christine

Ken has referred to his own red headed children on several occasions.

Christine, it might be brown, but I bet your hair (in the right light) has a reddish glow to it.....

....and about this time last year I was in the same spot you feel like you're in today....oh boy what a difference a few seasons make.....

....and after a while, you get to chuckling at the old curmudgeon with a bark worse than his bite. But we humor him....because he does know his hosta...and just gardening too....and I don't think he'd like to admit it, but it seems his heart is in the right place....and it is funny as heck when the banter gets to going.

:)

hi christine, welcome to the group. an eclectic mix of people who all love hostas and will go the extra mile to answer a question or offer advice. your hosta look gorgeous and i think we need to see more of that garden. love, love pics. andi

Apparently no one told Christine that she should lurk for a few months before posting, in order to learn the lingo. I hadn't planned to come out of lurking until I had some spring photos to share - but this post was so funny that - well here I am.

I've been reading for a few months, but I used this forum as a resource quite a bit when choosing my fall hosta purchases.

My name is Connie May and I am a hostaholic. We purchased our home in late October of 2009. There were only a couple of varieties here already and I only brought 3 from our old home (S&S, Northern Exposure and a sad little GE). I purchased 15 more varieties in the summer/fall of 2010. I purchased 31 last year. I did not collect hostas or any other plant to this extent previously. I would keep collecting but I have realized that if I do a good job of caring for the ones I have already purchased I will need to knock down two of my neighbour's properties to fit them all.

Connie May

Well, hey there Connie May!!! So Christine flushed you out of your lurking. Great to have another hosta-neer voice added to the chorus.

Being a recently discovered addiction for me, I've tried my best to keep my selections among the smaller varieties, but how can you ignore all the big ones, and medium ones.

I notice you double your plants the latest year, and if that holds true next year? You could be bringing home 62 new plants !!! Stick around and I'm sure you'll soon have a list longer than 62 to choose from.....and how about what you have at home among the 15 of 2010 and the 31 of 2011?
Start your own thread with those two lists. Maybe someone can suggest others you might like as well.

Oh yeah. I did not know the lingo, but I got a copy of Zilis' Hostapedia and read and read, and looked up pictures, and frequented www.hostalibrary.org ....because I truly knew NADA about hosta. mmmmmm, but I have high hopes.

Apparently in Michigan, red headed children grow on the driveway.

Steve

Or in the back yard watering the hostas...
{{gwi:957151}}

...and one should always "ignore the dwarf".

tj

You must be careful with showing a kid lying on driveway. I bet some local laws somewhere forbid that, could be hot, then it is child abuse. There are laws out there we do not know about. Like here it is forbidden to drink a bottle of beer in the front of the house. So I drink a beer with the label facing me and sit behind the house between my hostas, crazy.
Bernd

I saw some kind of thing that you can put over a beer can and it looks like a pop can. I can't remember for sure, but I think they had one for bottles, too. I'll buy one next time I see it and take pictures.

bkay

OK, let's recap.

1. Hosta ID (sort of)
2. Pink Azalea with no leaves
3. Kenspeak with lots of abbreviations
4. Made up Acronyms
5. Special Language joke (the thread goes downhill from here)
6. Red Headed stepchild
7. Red headed child on the driveway
8. Dwarf
9. Drinking beer in front of Bernd's house

10. Texas beer can disguises

Best. Thread. Ever.

Steve

Almost Steve..you are new-ish. Pretty close though. There have been a few and this one ranks up there among the best. Wish I could remember them from when I was a newbie well ever a decade ago. This can be a fun place, indeed. Stick around, you never know when these spontaneous things happen...

-Babka

How can you get downhill when you have a b***. I have been wandering around inspecting the progress of my hostss with a cup of coffee, should improve that with b***.
Have a good one! Threads improve when they become funny.
Bernd

That was fun. I love silliness. OOOOOOh, I feel a group hug coming on.

Christine

I can make it even better. I saw the beer can disguise at a gunshow.

bkay

Beautiful azalea. Everything must be perfect for it to look like that. They are a bear here - you have replace all the soil to grow them. Slowly, the alkaline water eats up the replaced soil and the azaleas die. Then, we hard-headed Texans do it again.

bkay

Remedy: Save an empty pop can, rinse it out. Open beer, slowly pour it in pop can and sit outside all you like drinking your really good soda.
Cher

Yeah, it's azalea heaven here. The soil is quite acid. All I do is throw some Holly Tone down after flowering and selectively prune some of the sprawl. A huge snowfall we had 3 years back broke off some large brances, and that just made them happier. All the acid-lovers adore it in Delaware: rhododendrons, camillias, hydrangeas, blueberries, holly (the state tree). There were 6 azalea bushes here when I arrived in 2006 (including the 4 bright pink ones in the photo), and now there are 23. This is one plant that I think is OK to get at Lowe's, and I have the best success with the tiny ones they sell for $2.50 which are not pot-bound like the big specimens.I do, however, miss the formosa azaleas that grew like weeds in Louisiana: big leaves, big flowers, big tall wide shrubs. (Goodness, I do have way too much time on my hands. You are probably asleep by now.)
Christine

Christine -- little did you know what might happen if you innocently stumble in and ask a simple question! Hope you feel your original query was adequately addressed!!!!! This is a bit like initiation for the newbies. (or hazing!)
I'm sorry you were downsized, but glad you now have time to spend here.
Jan

Jan, I worked in a garden center, which regretfully could no longer compete with Lowe's and Home Depot. I was 'perennial lady' in the big white hat. Here's something that i did that I now know was atrocious. I cleaned up all the plants, including the hostas, by removing the sad looking foliage. I'm certain that I unwittingly spread HVX. We didn't know. The pruners were never cleaned, and besides I frequently just used my hands. Yikes.

As for the original question, Libery and (I'm pretty sure) Thunderbolt. If it isn't Thunderbolt, I want it to be Thunderbolt because that is a great name.

I have some more NOID's that aren't fully leafed out yet. So, to be continued...

Christine

Hi Christine from another! I have been so busy with weeding, this is the first time I have had a chance to check in to the Hosta Forum. Since Ken has already gotten under your skin, you are now officially one of us! ;)

Did you say you are in Maryland?

chris