Beautiful bouquets, Xuan! I've spent all morning trying to figure out how to make the publishing project I'm working on print out the way it looks in the "print preview"... I'm working with a newer version of my publishing program, on my new computer, which has no clip art downloaded into it, and I'm not familiar with any of this yet! It's making me nuts! Your lovely floral bouquets have made me smile, and have helped to drop my climbing blood pressure! Thank you for sharing, Xuan! I'm a lot calmer now... and I'm smiling!

Very nice. My iochromas and daturas have been blooming like crazy. The iochromas started flowering in May and have been going the entire summer but not so the brugs. They are just hitting peak now and it's almost time to cut them back and store them for the season here. I have not had one seed pod form on any brug this year but my Wine and Scarlet iochromas have been full of seed pods. I only got a couple on my Indigo & Frosty Plum and the other purple/blue varieties haven't produced any pods yet. Do you propagate your iochromas by cuttings? If so what kind of success rate do you have? I have a terrible time with iochroma cuttings. Many times the ones that do root all of a sudden just die after a few months for reasons unknown to me. I only have good luck growing them from seed. Karyn

How long would you cure fresh potatoes for before canning? That would depend on how you do the curing, how mature the potatoes were when harvested, the size of the potatoes, and to a degree which variety. In other words there is no pat answer that applies to all. Much of it depends on first understanding how to grow potatoes and that is the problem most have IMO. They have little or no understanding of how to grow potatoes, the great differences in the varieties, much less when and how to harvest them so most are harvest far too early. When using most store bought potatoes all the proper harvesting and curing has already been done for you. The instructions call for using only "mature" potatoes for canning. That is usually defined as normal/full sized so that is where variety comes in as the normal size varies from variety to variety. Red Pontiac in normally smaller than Russets, Yukon Golds are normally the size of Reds but the various fingerling varieties are normally smaller than all others, etc. So you wouldn't use small little new russets when the normal russet is quite large. Then they need to be cured for approximately 4-6 weeks in cool (not cold) dry conditions. Dave

I am jealous, we had an asparagus bed in our old house and I miss it. Do enjoy!