I won't be able to come. We will be in Oregon that weekend. I was hoping we would be leaving the following Sun or Mon, then I could come, but we're leaving on the 12th.

anya-- What I do is I've got a free account over at photobucket.com . With every pic you upload over there, you get what's called a tag line. You copy and paste that tag line into the text of your message, and when you post it, the picture appears. Clean and simple, for the "HTML challenged" of us!! :-)

I will probably have more to say on this later, but briefly: right now I feel that when it comes to interior design we are in a stasis, and it will be so until there is a new technology that is applicable to furniture design and construction. The last cognitive leap, so to speak, in furniture design was in the mid-century period, when new technologies allowed designers to create wholly new designs--e.g. the Eameses and George Nelson and others who applied steam formed plywood splint technology and plastic embedded fiberglass (from aeronautical sources?) to create now Iconic plywood and fiberglass chairs, etc. Expanded foam technologies lead to the gigantic foam furniture, such as the Ligne Roset Togo. And then people got experimental with blow-up furniture and bean bags. AND --this is key-- they were all processes that allowed Inexpensive Mass Production. The next major furniture movements, the Post-Modernist and Memphis Movements (see "Ruthless People") were cartoonish riffs on existing styles...a sure sign that there was nothing essentially new. Crooked shelves, slanted tables, and chairs made out of glass are interesting expressions, but they don't really add much to the vocabulary of good approachable pieces. There are some high tech applications and materials used to make furniture currently (Graphite Fibers and such) but they are expensive and not accessible for mass production. So, while we are surrounded by technological advances in the "envelope" of our houses (mostly artificial intelligence stuff), I think the interiors are going to be reiterations of what has come before, until an innovative material comes along.

Hi prairiemoon2, yes these are seedlings. I did the crosses, marked them, collected the seeds and then grew them out over the Winter. There are many hybridizers doing wonderful things. Check out the Face Book hosta hybridizing groups to see people that are better at it than me. I did it for close to ten years but now am so short on space in my garden that I’m done (truth is my wife cut me off ;) :) ) Now I’m focused on an all seedling garden, saving the best seedlings from my years of effort. Its been a fun journey and it makes my garden extra special to me that all the hostas in my garden are ones I’ve grown from seed from crosses that I have done.