Fairytoadmother, you can get one at Kmart or Walmart this spring! :) The one in that pic wasn't real level and I came home one day to find it had burst. What a mess that was. So if you use those kiddie pools they must be very level. :) I can't keep Riley out of my ponds and water gardens. He's a real pain in the butt that way. I've tried everything including completly fencing the ponds and water gardens off to themselves. He went so far to bust out the skirting around our mobile home, went under the trailer and out the other side to get into the water gardens. DH says he's going to fix his butt come spring when I set everything up again. He's going to use one of our electric fencers and put a hot wire around them to keep him out. I'm not sure that will even work. He seems to be able to outsmart us on about anything.

Oh, wow! Yes, having them right next to each other like that helps a lot. But is Sovereign Queen usually really light pink like that? I was thinking of it as a lavender daylily, too. Or could the rebloom change the color that much? Or was I completely mistaken on that point? Lately, pictures of Spode are looking a lot more pink than lavender, too ... so I very likely could be off. It's funny, but when Dave's Garden shows pictures of Sovereign Queen varying from the very light pink that your picture shows (pictures #6 & #7) to a purple nearly as deep at Court Magician (picture #3), it makes it rather exceedingly difficult to get a good idea of what the color really is... Here is a link that might be useful: Dave's Sovereign Queen pictures

Jessica, to answer your question about LB, I've only had it a couple of years, and the scapes didn't get as tall this season as they should have, but then, it's been a crazy year weather wise. I do love the color and form of LB very much, and hopefully next season will be a better one for dl's. Thanks for your compliments about my photos. I just use a Kodak CX7525, but it takes pretty good pics. :) Thanks to everyone else who has commented on my photos also. You're all the greatest, and I love sharing my dl's with you all, but I also love seeing yours, so get to posting some more please!!! :) Jan

FGOAS, "----Of course this leads to question (experiment) of whether moisture really matters for developing a good crust. I know many here downplay that." I have not done a side-by-side, but that is the whole idea of baking bread in a Dutch oven. Also, I had the opportunity of visiting the factory in Brazil where they make all the baking goods for Au Bon Pain (the bakery and cafe chain). Steam oven is what they use. I assume they have done all the rearch. triciae , "----Does the escaping moisture eventually get out of the silicon tube? The loaf browns through the tube? Do you wrap the tube the diameter that you want the finished baguette, say 2-1/3" before putting the end caps on?-----" Thanks Tricia. Yes, steam will eventually seep out of the tube, based on the BTUs of "latent heat of vaporization of heat" absorbed thru the silicone tube. Yes, as you can see from the pictures, the loaf browns very well inside the tube. Silicone is actually a fairly good conductor of heat, that's why they use silicone grease to mount heat senitive electronics on heat-sinks. The diameter of the tube is entirely up to you depending what you want the loaf to look like. I have done very skinny loaves almost like bread sticks, and I have done totally uniform round loaves for slices for some recipes. dcarch