I was there in August and surprised myself with all the photos I took of bark features. The gardens are celebrating their 150th anniversary next year. Those metasequoias were planted shortly after WW II, and are truly majestic. Nearby is a zelkova with wonderful fluted trunk taper. I noted a parrotia that was peeling and flaking, and several maples, not just paperbark, with beautiful bark. Guess i need to go back after leaf fall and take more pics. Truly a world class garden. brian

waitingforspring - I think you are right that my NOID is Fairy Tale Pink. Wow! And I've had this 2 years and I ordered FTP last year and it will bloom for me this year so I can compare them to each other. I can't believe I ordered something I already have.

Thanks Shaxhome. Very good question. There are very important benefits for the sous vide method. 1. Less meat shrinkage, may be 5% less. This adds up to a lot of money. 2. Cheaper cuts of meat. I recently did London broil ($2.49 a lb) medium rare, and tender like expensive steaks. This will save a lot of money also. 3. Precise quality of meat done-ness. Rare, medium rare, medium ----- it is all up to you to set the temperature, nothing can go wrong. No-overcooking or under-cooking. Fool-proof. 4. Makes no difference how big the meat is, from one thin breast meat to a whole turkey. Set it and forget it. 5. Makes no different starting temperature, from frozen to room temperature. No need to poke around with a probe thermometer. 6. Re-heating without over cooking. 7. No need to "rest" the meat. In this case, the steaks were frozen, I put them in the sous vide cooker with a little seasoning, set the temperature at 129 F for one and 133 F for the other. A few hours later, 5 minutes before meal time, fire up the cast iron grill to red hot and grilled the steaks 1 1/2 minutes each side to sear. Perfect steaks. Perfect hot steaks. Guaranteed every time. dcarch

These are my 26 and 21 year olds along with a few I grew from seed from them. The tall one is about 7 years old from seed. Its like there are more flowers that dont show up in the photo than do show up. Tough to get a good shot with out going all out. Either way I thought that they were looking good.