I owe you an apology. I assumed you were a new person who was just trying to make waves. I did a little more digging and discovered that you have been around for quite a few years (at least four). Please accept my apology. Please let us know more about you....it must have been interesting living in the Caribbean. WANTED: Do you know what kind of plant this is? Posted by preppyjock 90032 (My Page) on Thu, Oct 27, 05 at 12:09 i used to live on a caribbean island. one day at a person's front yard, i foudn this cute, light purple leaves bush. when i first got it, it was so easy to grow. first I just put it in a cup of water, it growed a little, but it needs soil to grow better. so i just sticked it in the ground, they grow. now i moved to another island, i got 4 braches, two died. the other two i put in one cup. they didn't grow fast enough. so one day , i figured, i will divide them in two cups. now they both died. it doesn't have any flowers, just plain light purple mixed with a little gray on the leaves. it is randomly mixed with gray and light purple. the leaves are not oily looking. they are really light, a little transparent when they are young. i think that the leaves have the shape of a maple tree leave. they look similar to the following picture, so does anyone know what that is? if i can get it in the states? http://www.kestrel-press.com/cofc/emilysgarden/620/620_34732a60.jpg

york_rose, No I have not tried Duchesses de Brabant yet. I had high hopes with the teas and noisettes, because I was able to grow Mdme. Alfred Carriere with no problem. However, I read on the web recently that Mdme. Alfred Carriere is not a true noisette, and may in fact be a bourbon. I guess this explains its hardiness in my zone. Currently I am down to thirteen tea roses, and only three are thriving. I am really surprised by the climber Souv. de Mdme. Leonie Viennot; instead of dying back, it has put on long canes last summer. Mlle. de Sombreuil is also turning out to be quite hardy, and so is Mdme. Joseph Schwartz. I am really hopeful that these could turn out to be the teas that will grow into the stunning roses that I've seen here.

I have my daily rounds of GW. Here, Northern gardening, Far North, Plant propagation, seed starting, wintersowing, Houseplants. I've spent a lot more time in the houseplants forum this yr as that is what I do all winter. the gardening forums arent really that applicable to me in the winter. Winter sowing of course, but then there are so many southern us wintersowers and a lot is not applicable to us northerners. I have noticed even zone 7 people frequenting the northern forum - thats just weird. What could they possibly learn there?? don't you find it a little odd that if you look on the forums main page Northern and Far north are posted under canadian, but there are more americans there sometimes than canadians!! Anyhow, a lot of the forums are rather seasonal for us Canadians. But I still wonder where all the canadians are - there are so few in the forums I frequent that I can almost list them all. Maybe there are just a lot of lurkers who don't post. Or maybe they just don't have as much free time on their hands as I seem to.. Faith, it was certainly you that inspired me to check in here once in a while. My post requesting more forums has been pretty much nayed by Spike so here we are - all of us in this one forum!!

Unfortunately, I've seen (and heard about) quite a bit of it over the years. I can even remember when people were publicly "disinvited" to swaps and hot back-and-forth arguments that went on for days. I always hear that gardeners are friendly people, and I think that's generally true. But, it's not a guarantee. I've met some of the friendliest people I know of on this forum (and through the East Tennessee Plant Swap), but sometimes you just get a bad apple. The trick is to not let one bad apple spoil the bunch. (-: