Wow, Brandon! You've raised the bar so high that I simply MUST purchase some more plants for the Botanical Garden. Hehe! With the interest that has been expressed so far, I am expecting a good turn out. We have several folks from the Nashville, Cookeville, Crossville, Asheville(NC) and even a friend from Georgia that will be coming as well as many of the local area gardeners. We have a good mixture of experienced and newbie gardeners, with a wide range of interests - tropicals, trees, native perennials, herbs, etc. A couple of the folks coming have relocated to Tennessee recently due to the devastation left by last year's hurricanes. This will give us a chance to help them get started with their new gardens! This is a "come as you are, sit a spell, make new gardening friends, go home with a ton of plants, leave with a smile and look forward to your next swap" event. (~: Cheryl "Nat"

Well, darn. I have to work Sunday. I was so looking forward to getting to the swap and meeting all you nice people. I'm a lurker on the board because I can't log onto GW on my cell phone, so I'll just say hi now and hope I can work something out to make it on Sunday. Hi, everybody! I'll introduce myself properly on another thread. Kerry

Frances, With the brugmansia, you should have blooms this season provided you keep it well watered and feed it weekly. In fact, you can hardly over feed them! As far as overwintering is concerned, you have options: 1. Cut to the ground and cover with a heavy (6-8 inch) layer of mulch. Most will resprout in the spring, provided we don't have a bad winter. 2. Plant your brug in a big pot. After the first frost, trim the brug back - - leaving the main stalks intact. Store in a basement, garage, etc. where it will not freeze. Water only slightly once a month to keep the rootball from drying out. 3. Take cuttings. I prefer to take tall shoots (hardwood by summer end) and keep them in a bucket of water in my garage. I keep the leaves stripped and use an aquarium bubbler to oxygenate the water. In late winter, I pot them up and move them outside on warmer days. You also can take small cuttings, but they would need to be kept growing either under a light or in a window. I always have a few small ones, but then I have to fight aphids most of the winter - yuck. 4. Plant your brug, but lift the brug, root prune the rootball, place in a 5 gallon bucket and store the plant DORMANT in a basement, garage, etc. Water only slightly once a month to keep the root ball from drying out. Later in the summer, I'll be happy to walk you through with more specific directions or to add a couple of extra tall cuttings to my 5 gallon buckets to give you in the spring.

With all the activity on the our Swap Forum, I think this Fall Swap will be the biggest Fall Swap we have ever had! Many people that end up coming to the swap don't set up pretrades on the Swap Forum, but even if just the people that have posted so far came, it would still be a big success.