We saw a Peacock Strut in a garden at the Midwest Hosta Convention. Liked the red petioles, and the way it stood straight up. I think its worth the money, but that is just my opinion. The is one on the Hosta Library Auction, that ends in 13 hrs.

Thanks Shirley & Nancy. : ) I didn't notice the "smoke cloud" until after I got home and loaded the pics into my computer. Nancy, the entire exterior of our house will be brick, w/ possibly some stonework here and there. Not sure yet. We'll make it up as we go. But mainly brick (same as chimney). We bricked our current home back when we were remodeling it and DH did some "fancy" stuff....we've got several brick arches, quoined corners, etc. We aren't going to be doing much of that on the new house. I'm going for a simple, rustic look. The front of the house will have a porch or deck all the way across.....it's kind of hard to explain. I think we will be using a material such as Trex to build it. We are looking for no maintenance for the entire exterior and don't want to have to paint, stain, etc. anything. I've picked all of our colors to match very closely, but to have slight differences. Like the shingles, for example. They are overall only about 1 or 2 shades darker than the brick, but have mixed colors in them. One of the colors matches the brick perfectly. Well, i've got to get ready to head over there....we started working on installing a gate at the end of our driveway last night which involved much more than you would think. DH is building large soil berms (planting beds!!!!) along the road to keep anyone from driving in. In the midst of all of this, he dug up a buried telephone line and tore it in half. You can only imagine how furious he is. This was never marked by the utility company when we first started our building process and it should have been. So now we are at a stand-still until someone decides to come out and look at it today. I thought it would have affected neighbors (no phone service?), but nobody called to report it yet (maybe because they don't have a working phone??? LOL). We're hoping it's an old line, or maybe an unused one. It never ends....... HUGS, ~Dawn (mamabirrd) PS: No baby yet! C'mon Talon!! : ) I am soooooo sore and am barely able to waddle along.

funny i've evaluated it for 8 years, its a good one. it has similar parentage to irish luck. invincible open pollinated, but if i had to guess it would be from stingray pollen. which was growing right next to it. when its fresh in the spring its so glossy it looks like a house plant. the introducer felt it had more character than irish luck so we put it into tc which can take over a year to reach market after that.

Laura, that color of the Himalayan Blue Poppy really catches the eye. They must not be easy to grow or more people would have them. I would have them, lol. It's very pretty in your garden! Saija, oh, it's Chiquita. I see you showed yours in the alphabet. It's a nice, bright yellow in spring! I'm looking for more yellows, but I wish they would stay yellow the whole season.