Sorry I know this is old but still a lot of valuable information. I was researching butterfly bushes. I've tried a couple of the newer sterile varieties and they've been disappointing as far as attracting butterflies. I'm not sure they're worth the space. So I started wondering if the older varieties might be hard to find now. It would be a shame if they get lost over time like some plants do. I plan to watch for a couple next spring. Many years ago I had a few of the old varieties that reseed. Kind of a pain but at least they attracted butterflies. My mistake was planting them in a mixed perennial bed where the seeds had a great place to sprout. I think I could control one much easier if I plant it by itself where I can mow up to and around it. If I remember right, the seeds didn't travel far (for me anyway). They mostly just rain down. I've never seen a butterfly bush growing along a roadside here in Missouri so I'm going to try again. Hoping I can find a Black Knight (op called it Dark Knight) or Attraction. Zinnias are great for attracting butterflies if you get the right ones but I'm having trouble with disease (alternaria blight I think). On a side note - I looked at the UK study that said Lilliput zinnias were the best but the study seemed a bit lame to me. They only tested four varieties and they were mostly counting little butterflies like skippers. I think that's why some people are saying they're not that great.

" During the spin cycles it shook so violently that it started "walking." I had to push on it/hold it during the spin so it would not walk off the pad." I have not had this happen in two years of owning our SQ FL. I know nothing about installation because our vendor always installs for us. Our machine recently made some really loud noises when the load was unbalanced --- only two items: a heavy looped cotton bath mat & toilet mat on the spin cycle. I knew better, but had a senior moment when I ran that load with just two pieces. But the machine didn't move or walk (and IKWYM about "walking"....old top load machines would do that, too) I paused the machine to add a terrycloth towel to provide more weight distribution for balance, and then the machine was happy.

Sorry about your onions Dan. Last year I lost my onions because of a watering problem and they withered away. A few weeks later it rained and the onions started growing again but why and what stage were they in? They were in the bulb development stage and would never get bigger and eventually flower if given the time so I tilled them in. It was the first time I had to buy onions in 16 years. I would say your plants bolted because of water stress or a cold snap when your plants were in the bulb development stage and no other reason, and If the stress would of happened while the plants was in the vegetative stage the bolting would never happen. The tolerance level to stress between the two cultivars is probably different and why the 1015 hasn't bolted. Starts, (the plants you received from DD are starts, but they call them plant bunches.) are onions which are still in their vegetative stage and will grow through a cold snap or a watering issue but will never bolt if the stress is removed before the photoperiod triggered the bulbing stage, (only smaller onions) . If the onion bulb was bigger than the neck, like twice the neck size, and bulb initiation started it could trigger bolting but DD knows how to grow sets right, so I don't believe the starts was the problem. (They didn't have bigger bulbs than the neck, right?) Sets (small dry bulbs) are technically 2 year onions and I rarely plant them. Bolting and low storage is a problem so If I do use sets I pick the smallest bulbs from the bucket and no bigger than a dime.

Rosaprimula, Eragrostis spectabils/purple love grass is a stunning plant in the fall and grows wild in my back field and along the edges of roads where there is poor sandy soil. The edges of the highways and my field just glow, especially in late day sun, in August. Their seed dispersal mechanism is sort of like tumbleweed ; the flowering stems break off when the seeds are ripe, and roll along in the breeze shedding seeds as they go. So if you cut off the seed heads, it will have to be as they are starting to fade and you will need to gather them and bury them somehow to prevent them taking off across the allotment on the next breezy day. I don’t have any Andropogon, but I do have Schizachyrium scoparium/little bluestem. It has lovely bluegreen foliage all season with occasional pops of red/gold/orange and takes on more color late season plus has attractive fall seedheads. It is tough enough to stand up to the first few light snows. There two grasses grow well together. I am most likely to use grasses in wild prairie or meadow conditions. I use grass-like plants in garden beds, but because I have serious grass allergies I don’t use actual grasses where I might have skin contact in maintaining garden beds, so I do not know how much of an issue either of these are in gardens. I do have to remove the Eragrostis from my gravel driveway and veggie garden, so the seedheads do travel quite a distance. I do not use nonnative grasses because I am worried about invasiveness.