Hey Judy...you're quite welcome !! Everyone loves kuddos...lol. Hate to admit it but the most joy I get for my garden, aside from looking at it myself cuz nature just amazes me, is when people actually take the time to stop IN THEIR CAR while I'm out tending it to tell me how much they enjoy my garden or how pretty it is. It's not the complment. It's that I'm touching someone else's life with the beauty of nature. That all the expense (which I pay for on disability), all the hard work, all my aches & pains after a long day out there is making a difference in their life, ya know? We had a really warm day today in VA as well but not quite as hot as last week when I was out there in a bathing suit top (God forbid) and shorts (double God forbid...LOL) with my 55 y.o. white legs (well...54, 55 on the 7th). And out front, right 'on top of' 5 handsome young guys replacing my power pole for three days. Not quite the look I wanted to put out there in front of them...lol (I still feel so young at heart). But I didn't care. Just wanted to enjoy that gorgeous weather and was too hot for long pants!!! I worry about summer being hot, too. But moreso, everyone says with the mild winter, the 'skeeters' didn't get killed off. And I'm allergic to them, in the sense that bites swell up size of quarters and itch like the dickens. And if there's one within 50 miles, it's gonna get me...lol. And would you believe I saw one today !!!???? Holy crap...not YET !!! Well, I just love the pink Hyacinth. I don't know much about them but am used to them being white or purple, so the pink is soooo pretty. I'm scared to check out where you bought your tulips. Flowers are like crack with me (not that I know what crack's like...lol). And I have the same problem. I save everyting but somehow lost my tulip info and have these really pretty red but more coral ones that have lasted for soooo long. I want to order more but don't even know where I got them from. Oh well....Happy Spring !! Email me sometime if you ever wanna chat flowers. Can't check now but think my address is on my 'page'.

It can be very cold in El Paso. They actually got a decent amount of snow this last winter, more than us up north in central NM. My dad who grew up in Michigan and resides here in NM where it snows regularly says the biggest snowflakes he has ever seen in his entire life he saw in El Paso! Warmer atmospheres allow for bigger flakes, incidentally. Colder than one would think. It doesn't snow often, but it can surely snow (unlike most of AZ). The ariidity helps tremendously with the palms.

one flower on R. auriculatum has opened 'early' which is interesting because another bud is not even expanding yet, so will presumably bloom during the normal time for that species of August. This is one of those strange single floral buds where the others aborted. You can see the petals are a bit deformed. Fragrance is root beer-y. Here is the new growth on R. magniflorum. It was much redder a week ago but I kept forgetting to photograph it. This and R. auriculatum are very late to leaf out but very different; the leaves on R. . auriculatum aren't as colorful but have the showiest red leaf bracts of any plant besides 'Babylon'. But that leafs out in April, these two leaf out in June. http://www.rhododendron.dk/magniflorum.html Still a very small plant, it survived down to almost 0F, with snow cover, in the 2nd cold winter.

A reasonable summer would be nice!! I am living in a fool's paradise, as I have not looked at the forecast yet. We have had major flooding in the Ottawa Valley area, which is now finally abating, though the flow of water through town is still pretty scary. The flooding is now down on Lake Ontario and up the St. Lawrence to Montreal. They say letting the Lake down 1" will put the river level up 1' by Montreal. Wowser. In our garden, all of our mini-roses seem to have died. I didn't think the winter was that hard. Time to go shopping!! Nancy.