H O W D Y ~~~ DO ! ? ! TO YA'LL ! ! ! ~~~~~ I've missed Ya'll toooooo Thanks Karen.... Yes...Kirk is busy...with school... after all that BIG SNOW and stuff... he had Spring Break and HE Had TEACHER/Parent Conferences ! ! ! Ms Faith has had some Conferences and Talks on Butterflies & Garden stuff! ! ! Use2Bcapecodder~~ Sandy has a new computer and is busy~~ Busy ~~~ B U S Y !!!!! and Me..... I have Missed everyone so very very much... But I have kept Ya'll ALL in my prayers!!! as Karen says... I am sorting, packing, giving away~~~ and just de- cluttering and throwing out trash and Doing the unthinkable....DOWNSIZING ! ! ! Have to PART with some TREASURES! ! ! boohoo!!!! It is So hard... I should be use to it....I've had to do it SEVERAL TIMES B-4 ! ! ! but it is still NOT EASY ! ! ! I am trying to pass on to others.... some garden treasures.... SO THAT MAKES IT EASIER>>> It is just that EVERYONE does 'NOT' SEE the Treasures in the same way ! ! ! But I W I L L S U R V I V E and I Am going back to my roots..... My Beloved Texas ! ! ! I will miss be Ms LLF (Kathy) neighbor !!& CountryGirl and being close to Ms JeannieSpines and TOOOO Much Glass!! I will miss Lake Michigan.....but not ROCK RIVER! ! ! But... My Hubby's family lives here... so I will always be around Milwaukee...Chicago ~~~ Wisconsin & Illinois.... BUT TEXAS Is My Home... and My DD and Grandbaby will be there and YOU KNOW I WILL BE CLOSE ! ! ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You know I was missing in action... because I took a couple of nasty falls.... and My Right Arm is hurt and hard to type... and I just had another fall on Sunday...re\-hurt the same injuries.. and added some more... BUT >>>>> You know what they say.... IT's HARD TO KEEP A GOOD Junker DOWN! ! ! So L@@K Out ! ! ! !! I'm Back ! ! ! Thanks for caring ! Thanks for being my friends! Thanks for Sharing A L L the WONDERFUL Pictures!!! and Thanks for Sharing ALL the FANTASTIC IDEAS ! ! ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ God Bless ! Your Friend, SusieSunShine

Have so enjoyed this thread; brings back a lot of nice memories from when I first discovered this forum and started lurking back around '96 or '97. Previous to that I had lurked on rec.garden.roses and enjoyed that but this format was so much better and still remains the best IMHO. I did my first post in 2002 I believe after Pat Henry of RU kindly wrote out for me Kathy Zuzek's list of recommended Buck roses. I asked her if I could post it on GW and she was pleased and said please do. So, after stewing about 2 weeks, I took the plunge and posted the list. I still mostly just lurk. Have missed many of the early posters; felt like family. Many changes occurred about a year or so ago on this site causing many to leave and losts of "shouting" back and forth among members. This was my place where I came to relax and as tensions mounted, I found it stressful and left. Glad to see we are back to former times, and calmness and civility are again the rule. The Frenchmand or Belgian whom I have seen referred to in above posts was Christian (sp?). He worked as an air controller. He use to post beautiful pictures in the early days when few were posting pics. I still remember a pic of the control tower where he worked. His picture of Veilchenblau was spectacular and I had to have it after seeing what kind of a show that old rambler could do. He also kindly provided a link where he had recorded all the names of the French named roses, carefully and slowly pronouncing them so we could pronounce them correctly (I still butcher them). Remember Paul on the Lake who taught us all to fall in love with the Tyrosaurus Rex rose commonly called William Baffin, and his annual tales of pruning the monster to keep it from devouring his house. Paul's artistic temperament and training showed in the pictures of his beautifully designed perennial beds. And that lawn! It looked as if every blade of grass was cut by hand and weeds, what weeds! Remember the adventures of our friends Bill and Jack in their California swimming pool and their Mommy who grew beautiful roses. It wasn't a holiday without the adventures of Bill and Jack all suitably "dressed up" for the occasion. I still remember Jean's dear Floyd with his little blue metallic New Year's hat on his head. No one deserved to die his death in this day and age. Cindi and her black swans. Remember the pics of when her kitchen flooded and the swans peeked in and thought they had discovered a new swimming pool. Her circular bed of Knockout backed by tall evergreen trees and surrounded by lawn was one of the most beautiful pictures I had seen and kept it on my desk top. Unfortunately my computer recently crashed and I lost all my pics. Am trying to downsize as I get older and my energy levels decrease. Bax Boyd who use to be very active on the Propagation Forum lives near me and had given a talk on how to propagate roses for our local rose society in 2001. He taught me too well and I have many roses rooted from his large collection as well as those I bought. Nice to hear from so many members again. Wishing you all the best with your "rosing." Jim

I, too, am a newbie to this forum & am enoying the warm fellowship here.Want to add my Amen to the 'miracle to behold'; I Thank God above each time I release one of His beautiful creations, saying a prayer for its' safety on its' new life & journey, where ever it leads to. Am 63 yo happily married, retired RN, who has been a homebody since retiring due to health problems in '82, probably before most of you were born, so I feel like an 'ol timer. I feel as though I am going through my second childhood, which has turned out to be more fun, (what I remember of it), than the first. Got started in butterflies quite by accident on a trip out of town for a 'get-away' long w/e & visited a favorite plant buying spot, a State Farmers' Market. While browsing about looking for unusual plants to bring home, I heard one of the vendor's saying "They are Monarch butterfly eggs & caterpillars", which immediatly got my atttention. I went to his space & saw some plants, had no idea what they were, he said it was Milkweed, I bought one, it had a large cat on it & I knew nothing about cats, but figured with the web, I could research & find out what to do. This was 10 + years ago; the mw turned out to be bronze fennel, & the cats turned out to be a BSTs, which I gazed at for hours on end, watching the eggs & seeing my first one eating his first meal was like a 'Spiritual experience', as well as the first emerging BST, I had tears in my eyes. (Did the same thing first time I saw childbirth in nursing school!) Am a Christian, so it was like seeing the Master's hand at work, closeup & personal, if you know what I mean! The trip home was so funny, with that plant behind my hubby's head, in a clear heavy plastic plant sleeve; he was driving, & the fennel stuck up about 6 " above his head. I kept an eye on a large cat that was eating,just inches from his head, kept hearing a 'ping' every now & then, (sounded like something was hitting the plastic plant sleeve). Had no idea what it was, (hubby heard them too), he would say "What's that?" I replied "Dunno!", but found out when I got it home & saw more 'pings' which later I found out was frass! I had large long plant sleeves in my trunk, always prepared for plants, so as not to get a frown on hubby's face with the possibility of getting my car dirty. The cat kept my attention, & I kept looking back, saying 'Dear Lord, please, please, don't let him crawl on hubby's head". We arrived home after the 2 1/2 hr trip with no incidents, during which hubby kept asking me what I was looking at, to which I would mattter-of-factly reply, "My plant in the back." After unpacking the car; first thing was locating the 'mw' in my solarium, placing it in a cachepot & adding a small hand-made butterfly house that I had, making it quite attractive. After all was unpacked, I showed hubby "what I was looking at" on the trip home. The 3rd-4th instar BST was quite large, & he remarked "That was behind my head all the way home!" After having the 2 additions to our home, the solarium & a master suite, with decking running the length of the house with a large area in the center, I started collecting inside & outside birdhouses & an occasional butterfly house. That first year everybody in the family gve me b'fly & birdhouses for Christmas, & the collecting kinda got out of hand, they are everywhere! So began my passion for these lovely creatures. It took me several years to locate mw seeds, which are not native to our area & now my 'garden' or 'forest' has grown to more than 1,000 mw of many varities, fennel, parsley, Dutchman's Pipevine (first year, so I don't expect flowers, from what I have read about it)Moonflowers Angel's trumpets, many varities of nectar plants & a Catawba Worm Tree. (In our area, local word has it that the Catawba Worm Tree is supposed to be the host plant for the Luna Moth.) All of my plants are container-grown on my large deck out back of our home. Each season there tears of joy & sorrow, as some don't make it, & days when I have more than a dozen to release when hubby is in the backyard with our dog, his baby, it is a glorious time for me. I remember last year one Monarch was very hesitant to leave the pavilion, staying at the bottom while the others had lined up almost in a spiral 'take off' pattern, & I reached down & got her, checked to make sure she was okay, & held her on my finger in the sunlight, saying "Look at how beautiful the colors are! They look like somebody put glitter on her!" My poor hubby, who was hot & tired, was saying "Yeah, yeah, let it go, it will fly away". This beautiful lady flew to his cheek, & lit there just a bit! He was so surprised. I told him he just got his first 'Butterfly kiss!" He meekly smiled, called the dog, chuckling, picked her, & went in the house. You ladies know how our men are, you gottta love them, with all of their patience, putting up with our 'whims in life', for the most part supporting us in everything we do. Didn't mean to write a 'journal' here, but wanted to share how I got into this passionate hobby that has become a very important part of my life. Having several painful health problems, Lupus, Fibromyalgia, 3 failed back surgeries, being among them, it has been the greatest therapy, & God has richly blessed my life with the joy of butterflies, in fact locally I am frequently called "Butterfly Joy"..May God continue to bless all of you & thanks for having me as part of this great group.. Joy, from Coastal NC (Saw my first Monarch of this season 8-8, a male; he nectared on mw like he was starving, & gracefully flew away; y'day it was over-cast & t-storms in our area, so didn't see any more. Forecast is favorable for this week, so will be on the lookout for more). God Bless

When I visit my daughter in Tampa, we visit a Florida Natives Nursery out in the country from Sarasota on Myakka Road. I tried to get their plant list from their web site, but when I clicked on it, it kept bringing me back to the home page. You could call them and see how well stocked they are with passionvines. I'm surprised zebra longwings will use the red-flowering types of passionves - I thought they were toxic to ZLs as well as gulf frits. I'm quite sure the plants at this nursery are not sprayed, nor would they likely use systemics. And they could give you some good advice about where to plant them. I'm not familiar with Florida conditions, and I've never had the pleasure of raising zebras, just gulf frits. If this nursery is out of passionvines, you could make a trip to Mail Order Natives in Lee, Florida in the panhandle (toward the eastern part) and get P. incarnata, which I know all longwings thrive on. I'd call Amy first, though, and be sure she's got some for sale. Sherry Here is a link that might be useful: Florida Natives Nursery