You could probably order a fair number of heirloom bulbs from Paul Christian Rare Plants (or, well, some of them), and heirloom daffodils from R.L. Scamp/Quality Daffodils. Both are in the UK, and ordering wouldn't be cheap, but you could get *some* things. You might also try contacting the Hortus Bulborum in Leiden directly--they do sell bulb packages if you can get on the list early enough. There are websites for all of them, but I don't remember the URL's offhand.

I don't think the blade size has much to do with whether it needs a bigger engine. The smaller one i have has an 8h.p. on it, and it pulls the yard carts easily. The 12 hp does just as good. Never had any trouble with either one, but i don't haul rocks or dirt, just small logs, leaves and grass. the thing i like about it is the fact that they are not top heavy, as a tractor seems to be. I can whiz around my sloped yard at speed and have never had so much as a tilt, or upset. But, beware of starting out up hill, with a full or partially full grass catcher on the back! (Especially in gear!) The machine will rear up, like a startled horse, and scare the bejabbers out of ya! They are great for chopping leaves and blowing them into rows, for pickup with the bagger attachment. I try to go around and chop the leaves and blow them into rows for easier gathering!

I mail order bulbs from Botanus.com or buy them locally from Via Verde (descended from the now defunct bulb supplier Cruikshanks)both have a few of the heirloom bulbs listed by Old House Gardens but not the heirloom "broken" or "English florist" tulips. On the page linked below you can see two heirloom examples: "Mabel" and "Lord Stanley" (Named after the father of the originator of the Stanley Cup.) And on the same page check out that gem from 1620 Lac Van Rijn. Maybe I'll suggest to Via Verde to investigate importing some. Sharon Here is a link that might be useful: Lord Stanley, Mabel and Lac Van Rijn

yes apt get is still around but most people want a gui based way and not learn command line. And the fact that some of the distros are altered versions specially created for use on these little netbooks makes it more difficult to help because the altered distro may not be the same as the full distro etc. Using synaptic is a breeze, you just open the synaptic package manager which would be listed in your applications menu and then when it ask for root type that in and it opens synaptic just like in that picture then you can either search for the name of the item you want or go through the list looking for it, once you do find it, say you are looking for firefox, do search for firefox, it finds it and you see it listed in the list hilight it and select mark then apply and it will tell you that it will be installing that to your pc you click ok and it does it's thing and then says it completed successfully and you close that window and voila you now have firefox on your pc. That is how you install any type of program to linux. You do not do like you did in windows and search the web and find some program that you have no idea if it is safe or not and download an exe to your pc which you then execute and hope that it is not virus laden. The programs are already all loaded into the repository and have been checked so you know they are clean and safe, you find them using synaptic or some package manager and install them. It is so much easier than the windows way. You just have to unlearn windows. Windows to Linux: A Beginner's Guide that is a must have site, there are many others that I relied on heavily when I started but by far the best thing is to find a good related forum for your version and sign up. It really is not that steep a learning curve just like going to a Mac you have to learn a new os same with linux, once you learn it you realize it makes much more sense. does that asus eee use Gnome or KDE desktop? I much prefer KDE it is more similar to windows. this is from an ubuntu source but does a good job of explaining What is Synaptic ? Here is a link that might be useful: debianuser forums