Thanks Beverly and Ludi. Been busy checking for pips yesterday and today - some are huge - Spilt Milk in particular. Some doubling of pip/eye counts for Komodo Dragon, Neptune, and Empress Wu.....woohoo...or is that wu hu. Quite a few are still too early to see what gains have been made. Looks like rain off and on thru Wednesday. Here's another pic of a seedling from 2011 - Northern Exposure. NE gave me a number of streaked seedlings that year - the neatest one a streaked/misted curly leaf one doesn't look like it made it (sad), but this streaker has nice colors and hopefully gets some big leaf size eventually, like its Mama. Paul

After this dumping of snow today (April 22nd), it appears that they are finally forecasting "normal" temperatures for the upcoming weekend. I agree that it is always possible to get weather like this in Minnesota. But, to answer the initial question regarding the comparison of last year to this year, I would venture to say that this one year difference is the most extreme in the last several decades. I imagine the local news "weather folks" will be reporting on this in the coming weeks. I do also agree that any moisture is better then drought (the latter half of last summer and last fall were horribly dry). However, all too often a wet spring leads to a dry summer (. . and a dry spring leads to a wet summer). But, really, anything is possible in our great State of Minnesota :) - Adam

Thanks Islandbreeze! Plumerias are one of my favorite tropicals, I definitely recommend them. And I think I am confusing the oleander in this pic with my pink one which is a Calypso. Thanks for catching that! My home depot carries crape myrtles a lot lately so you can check yours and maybe you'll get lucky. They are great trees, I'm sure the hardier varieties would do well by you in a good spot. Crapes are really commonly sold here now, they are one of the few trees that can be grown as street trees in NYC (since you need to get your street trees approved before you plant them here) which I think is pretty cool since they are so synonymous with the south. Thanks for looking! -Alex

Parr - if I'm understanding your question, you are reading the limit of three as being for 3 leaves/plantlets per person. That's not what I intended, you could send as many as you would like. The limit of three means that if you sent 10 leaves (all of one variety) that you would only be guaranteed three different ones back for those 10 of the same variety. If you sent 20 leaves of all different varieties, you would get at least 20 back. That's how the seed exchanges I've participated in have been set up to help ensure variety. Hope this helps! :) I was hoping that this format instead of the standard round robin would result in less loss of plant material. In following the round robin threads, it seems that often people are having to toss and replace items which have gotten mushy.