I tried something new this year with excellenbt results...I have been cutting off foliage of perennials (and annuals as I get around to it) and running over it with the lawnmower. It is yielding me a lot of nice material for my compost pile. As an aside, if you put your garden remains in the trash, do you know where YOUR trash goes and what happens to it after it leaves your property? You should, so you can do the best and most educated job you can of clearing your garden. In many communities, the garden waste goes to a landfill, which is considered a no no. Not because it's toxic, but because it is wasteful of the landfill space. Some communities recycle waste and sell the compost, usually through a third party. Garden waste which is treated like this should all break down within 12 months, but they have equipment that helps it along. In stil other communities, the waste is burned, then the heat exchanged and sold as power. For these people, wet leaves and garden waste are the no no because it takes a whole lot more fuel to burn wet stuff as opposed to dry stuff. One of the best things you can do is find out what happens to your waste. It will make a difference on how you dispose of unwanted things. Might also help you make more informed choices when purchasing, too. Lime

Impatiens because they're the only flowers that will survive in the shade of my wisteria, and geraniums because they're the only ones that will survive in the containers of the front windows and balconies in the full sun. I now officially hate impatiens and geraniums, but I'll end up planting them anyway because every replacement I tried died. There! I'm glad I got that off my chest! :-)))) Balibar

Thanks for the inputs! Interesting stuff to ponder... Anyone can speculate about different scenarios, imagine some huge farm somewhere very warm, where there's a grove of Dracaenas, just growing tips to propagate. And when I bought this plant in OH, gas was only about $1.50 per gallon, so it's imaginable that a truckload of them could have come from somewhere... I was just wondering if anyone knew for sure. These may take root easily, but seems to take a lot longer than coleus, for example, which are usually much more expensive unless it's a 6-pack of little wizard seedlings, although 1 frost is enough to kill a coleus where a Dracaena could survive that. You can't have everything. So true! I miss lilacs!

Kristine, have you received more or less food for thought than you had imagined when starting this discussion? :+) "a state of enthusiasm" this made me giggle! I'm there, just not about sowing seeds in general. Paul, "permanently potted as opposed to being dug up and brought inside or having cuttings taken and rooted in pots" = houseplant to me. LOL! Good point about season longevity being a factor in the necessity of dabbling with winter sowing vs. starting flats of seeds indoors. Often very basic advice about both veggie & flower gardening says to start seeds indoors x number of weeks before hardening off outside. Although I agree, most people don't do this, the many instructions include this step. Often mentioned on the seed packs. Very intimidating, who's house includes a grow room? And if it does, why would they be looking for basic instructions? https://images.food52.com/Ifmr1oFfWOqODx_LuvAuXWpVr9c=/fit-in/800x0/9b15e879-f860-4a1c-919c-f6afbf37c0b2--IMG_0720.JPG If it's not a true annual, and not hardy here, I'm going to keep it indefinitely if I paid for it. It doesn't always work out, but nothing is purchased outside of this goal. Just because the store needed to sell it as "an annual" so nobody would expect it to survive in the ground here, it's a houseplant to me if it survives the regime for plants @ my house. The number of plants that do fit this goal is nearly infinite, I always have a full house and the last few years, a small but full structure I loosely refer to as greenhouse. I see no reason for my personal genré to go beyond this, when it comes to buying already-growing plants. Every year I buy a few different things, and even though there are few stores that sell plants near my home, I usually find something when I go, in either the houseplants section (emphasis foliage) or with the annuals (emphasis blooming.)