Good for you, Vera. Now, it's fall- time to move the existing plants. I know what you mean about the tomatoes. All of a sudden there are so many we can't get rid of them. I eat the cherry ones all day. We give them away, take them to work to give away. But the next day the table is covered again. Karen

I found one more today so up to 5! I plan on checking this one gravel road on the way home from work, it had alot of milkweed up.

Rain likes to miss Winchester. I work in Lexington and will see more rain hit there.. drive home... bone dry! I have caught a few lucky very brief spurts of rain while I was home (the best time). I removed the spout from one of my roof gutters on the house and am ready with a stack of 4-gallon kitty litter buckets next to the chute. When it rains, I quickly swap in buckets til they are full and pop in the next one. I then cover them with the original lids and store under my patio deck in the back yard. I use this water mostly for my blueberry plants. It's still not enough rain for all my plants, but at least it helps. I also catch the condensation drip from my AC units in a bucket and switch in a new bucket daily. I would like to rig up a permanent rain barrel someday, but my gutters don't lend enough room where they are located. It would be nice if more people used their 'gutter water' in this way too.. I encourage anyone to try to collect rainwater and keep it covered (prevent mosquito breeding). Imagine if everyone used the free water off their roofs.. I wonder if municipal water would be less expensive.

Malcolm, thanks for the head's up on the possibility of black spot on Grandmother's Hat. I will be sure to put it somewhere where it can get good air circulation. I hear a lot about people growing GH on the west coast and not so much about it here but it sure is pretty and worth trying :) How high has your climbing Devoniensis got for you there? I bet it is exceptionally vigorous on Fort rootstock! I haven't been to FL Southern College's rose garden yet. I should definitely plan a trip down there sometime soon! As far as grafting the only thing I have tried grafting is citrus. I would like to learn to graft on fortuniana. I don't know if the nematodes here are as bad as in Central or S Fl but I know we have them in the sandier areas of our property because I have had root damage on certain brugmansias that are susceptible to it. Come to think of it, I also did some grafting experiments with some other members of the Brugmansia Grower's International several years ago. We were trying to graft brugmansia seedlings that we intentionally planted that were either full or partial albinos to regular green seedlings lol.