Bill and Sue, My orders this year were a combination of love at first sight and cheapskate curiosity. The "love" order was 'Port Royale,' a dark crimson Japanese peony from Song Sparrow (it just arrived, and looks like a good plant). I saw it last winter on their website, and totally fell for it. I fell in "love" again in the spring, and ordered 'Early Glow' and 'Mahogany' and 'Amalia Olson' from Hollingsworth's. They should arrive any time. 'Early Glow' and 'Mahogany' will find homes in my "hot" garden in the back yard. The "cheapskate curiosity" order is from Wild's. I know they won't send large roots, but for their clearance price I could try half a dozen plants for the price of one from Klehm's or Hollingsworth, and even use a couple as gifts to a friend if they're really healthy. I ordered 'Mt. St. Helens' because my son is nuts about volcanoes, and he liked the idea of a plant named after his favorite eruption. I also ordered 'Mischief,' 'Polar King,' and a couple others whose names escape me right now. Now I have to find ROOM for all these beauties, since I bought 'Kelway's Glorious' and 'Duchesse de Nemours' this summer. I have to finagle the peonies in among my other plant loves - heirloom irises and daylilies. Laurel

I'm just going to say something that's been on my mind. Last year, I asked about a variety which seemed to me to have no special "cachet" whatsoever. I had grown Large Red Cherry tomatoes forever and it was just such a dependable choice. Some questioned the wisdom of spending $$ and space on the plants. Others here pointed out that LRC was a Quisenberry collection heirloom - news to me! Gonefishin' said that he had room for one more plant and he brought home a LRC. Once it started growing and producing, he couldn't say anything but nice things about it. In some of his last posts, he talked about saving seed and about having started cuttings for 2008. I can't fully tell you how his interest in the variety made me feel. I felt he had fully vouched for my own appreciation of this relatively unacclaimed variety with its "generic" name. Bill P. always set out to help and encourage others. He was very successful in his efforts. SteveÂs digits and all the rest of him

That's actually what I liked about it (small town). When we were building, I was really impressed by an experience I had in town at that little Tru-Value store by McD's. I'd gone in to get some painting supplies, talking to the clerk, he knew right off where we were building. I'd gotten everything together and he'd wrung me up, and there was another customer who needed help down in the back of the store. In the middle of writing out the check, I told him to go ahead, that I'd wait. His response was that's okay-- here's the receipt. Just leave the check on the counter! Living around the New Haven area all my life (first in West Haven till I was 10, and then in Orange), that was the first time in my life I'd encountered that kind of trust from ANY business. If you think Terryville's small, you ought to see where I am now, in Maine! Bridgton has a year round residency of about 3500 people, although in the summer, that swells to about 8000. :-)

I am probably not going to be posting many pics when asking questions any more because I find that too many people are only looking at the pictures, NOT reading the text, and thus their responses are either directly contrary to something I've said in the text (for instance "get rid of XYZ" or "the color of ABC is wrong" when I've already said in the accompanying that I love XYZ so it's not going anywhere or that the color of ABC is really more toward mauve when it shows up as puce in the picture) or have nothing at all to do with what I'm asking. I find that intensely frustrating. I have almost no pictures of my current house because it's still in "whatta dump" stage. No paint (walls need a TON of work), short on furniture, dreadfully designed kitchen that's a perpetual mess because there's nowhere to put things... and forget outside pictures, a few weeks ago we ripped out almost every trace of vegetation outside (and will not be replacing it until next year, probably fall '09 to get the end-of-season sales) due to a honeysuckle invasion that I swear was growing by feet per day and was starting to attack the porch. I'll happily post pictures of my previous house because I think I did a pretty decent job with it. We're not on Google Maps but we're kinda-sorta on Google Earth - but the best you can get is a fuzzy whitish blob in the midst of a bunch of other fuzzy whitish blobs on a fuzzy grayish stripe. No closeups. Our town is clearly not a high priority as far as Google is concerned! WRT security - we live in a somewhat iffy neighborhood so I am one HECK of a lot more worried about the people a dozen houses down the street breaking in looking for meth money than I am about someone trying to track me down via the Internet (I Googlebate every so often just to see what's out there re: me) from half a dozen states away. I've been email-stalked and -harassed a bunch of times in my 18 years online because of my outspoken ;-) opinions and my ISPs have always been helpful in dealing with it. However, I've had meet-ups with a whole slew of people I've met online over the years, twice flying nearly cross-country to do so, and it's been grand fun.