-Renee, yep! An heirloom columbine and Geranium macrorrhizum ;-) -Mary Lu, that is indeed rhubarb. I have already made a few crisps from it this spring. Yum! -Susan, correct! That is 'Fireball' Geum, one of the bigger cultivars. It is only one plant- looks like more since the stems on this fellow have a habit of leaning, lol. -serenae, would love to see pics of the arbor you built sometime!! -mandolls and Lynne, thank you! I was thinking the other day how much more personality this one has than the one at the store. Plus it seems to 'fit' better with the look of the garden. CMK

I am in Northeast Ohio. It looks very much like the one I saw. I had my 1yr old in my arms, ran to get my video camera, I must not have had it recording properly trying to balance son, and camera... i was so upset I lost the video I thought I had. It was about 3-5 mins of REALLY good video too as I saw in through the camera. Is it possible it was the hummingbird moth in Ohio? It was extremely fast

Correction maybe? A seedpod generally contains more than one seed and while some seed pods may look like they're a single individual seed, they generally do have more than one inside the pod? Nealy all the mallows do have a single pod inside the individual flowers of course but the inside has compartments with a varying number of seeds in each compartment . Sounds perhaps like a hardy hibiscus, or "moscheutos" though I don't recall seeing those in CA, and the winters may not be cold enough for their normal dormant winter period? Could be just one of your larger flowered hybrids of regular tropical hibiscus as well? I would add however, not all plants produce seeds in pods and sometimes the seeds are individuals around the dry flower head, in the case of most of the composite family. No pods there, as far as I know.

My daughter begged for a tattoo,I always said NO. The day after her 18th BDay, she went to a tattoo parlor and got a tattoo, a small black heart outline on her left hip. Her best friend Steohanie got an identical tat the same day on her right hip. Actually quite cute, and would be hidden if they wore normal clothes. I asked her if she wanted another one. Oh no, it hurt soooo much! I'm glad she found out they're painful. I know at the tattoo parlor they are verey sanitary, change needles between customers, and advise customers to wash with antiseptic cleanser for a week. They gave her a brochure. But there was no anesthesia, nothing to kill the pain. And they did "proof" her age. I would hate to see a small child with a real tattoo.