Ruby Star is a beauty I acquired it on saturday, along with several others. I keep adding to my collection knowing full well some will probably not do well but, what grows well in one garden doesn't in another so it's going to be an ongoing experiment as to what will grow for me. The Tikki Torch I picked up were young plants so don't know if I will see blooms this year. Even though my soil is well draining our winters and springs have been so wet in the last few years I've been concocting a plan to keep the crowns dry through the winter without covering them with mulch, kind of a crazy idea but it just might work, if it doesn't, back to the drawing board LOL. Have you got Razzmatazz? I love this one mine looks like bright pink pom poms. Pink Double Delight is similar but slightly different shape and a lighter pink. I would buy Pink Double Delight in bloom so you can see the difference, up here some of the PDD's being sold are really Razzmatazz. Coconut Lime is another fav. I didn't realize that some of these had such a nice sweet scent, bonus. Below a pic of my Razzmatazz. Annette

terrene: Like sooey, I only count the time actually spent watching the birds. For me, this is usually 1 to 4 hours (estimated); just spread out over the whole two days. I spent more time for the Christmas Bird Count, which was one of my two PFW days, so I called that 4 to 8 hours total. Most of my productive counting is done in the early morning hours when the birds are feeding after a long night. I'll often look at my tally sheet around 10 or 11 am and see that most of the regulars are there. There's another burst of activity after I refill the feeders in the late afternoon. I do this so that there will be plenty of food in the morning and I won't feel pressured to get out there early. The rest of the day is for stragglers and fine-tuning the count. sooey: I don't really hear the cardinals in the winter - my windows are pretty tight. The Mourning Doves are a different issue. They come at dusk, but they're so wary (I think because of the hawks) that I usually don't see them. Often I'll see 2 or 3 at a time during the daytime, but when I go out to refill the feeders I'll hear that squealing sound of a flock of panicky doves taking flight. If I look up fast, I can get a rough count of the flock, maybe 10 or 12. The other birds that come at dusk with the cardinals are the native sparrows, but these are really hard to identify - little brown birds in the shadow of a big shrub. Claire

Sorry to hear about the goldfinches. I do not know if it is related to the problem you are having but one time I had a similar situation and it turned out to be a batch of bad seed. Dumped out the seed, sanitized the feeder, replaced with fresh seed from a different supplier, and the birds came back. Chickadees used to be a common, friendly sight here - I even had them eating sunflower seeds out of my outstretched hand - but I have not seen a single one in two years now. Very disheartening. I think there are some serious environmental issues going on that we are not aware of (or are not being made fully aware of) that are destroying bird populations or are reducing species' ranges. Your dove story is funny... My goldfinches still feed to the left at least 90% of the time. Quite a funny observation that still makes me chuckle when I watch the little critters feed.

Joanie and Nuts: if you are over fifty you no longer have to pretend and can donate the book to your local library. I think it’s a law. You also no longer have to eat stuff you don’t like and pretend to agree with people you think are idiots. Unfortunately you can’t hurt all those people’s’ feelings—-YET, you have to wait for full carte blanche until age 80–so brush up on artful conversational redirects. 🙄