Hi Jeff, I saw this flower as a small child and it mesmerized me somehow. Finally got e. 'bidwillii' when I started gardening, but it got massive, sprawled everywhere, and had thorns from hell, so I had to remove it. Got e. 'herbacea' from Wayne a couple of years ago at the swap, and it is now about to flower. Both seem very hardy here. Commonly known as "fireman's cap". For the health of her plant, why don't you offer to divide it for her and bring me a start at the Fall swap! ;-D The one I saw as a child belonged to a friend's mother. When she died two years ago the plant was still alive. Thanks for the pictures - they're beautiful and bring back lots of memories. Nelson

something very strange just happened at my house, on Vancouver Island. A male and a female hummingbird were sitting on my sundeck. My dog was growling at something that's how I found them. The male was leaning against a cement post, my dog was tapping it with her paw. He didn't move. I asked my husand to come to pick them up and take them somewhere safe, when he tried to pick up the male he flew off. The female just moved to the edge of the deck. When I touched her slightly, she flew to our cherry tree and sat there for a while. In all the years that I have been feeding hummingbirds, I have never seen this before .. especially when my cocker spaniel was standing over them growling and touching them! Does anyone have any ideas why they would do this?

Bellatrix: Thanks for posting this. I think I pulled my nectar feeder down in mid-October. I still have some plants blooming for hummingbirds--don't remember what I planted though. One is kinda short and kinda blue. Others are fluffy and red. I'll have to look into the "late-blooming rosebud salvia" and figure out what I already have. Some abelias, that the RTHs visit, are still blooming. I'm about 30 miles south of Ephrata and about 60 miles southwest of Collegeville. Here is a link that might be useful: Big Bird, Little Bird

Jim, Come on down, I have two potted up. One in a one gallon pot and another in a three gallon pot. And there are a whole bunch of suckers in the ground. I plan on leaving them there until late winter - early spring before potting them up, since I don't have the room to over winter them indoors in pots. But if you want one of the suckers I could pot one up for you. My email is issaquahfish at msn.com. You can have one without a trade, but if you have anyone of the hardy Schefflera's I would be interested in a cutting or a start. They are very hard to find in North America. They sell them in Europe but for someone like me, it would be impossible to get. Crug Farms out of Scotland sell numerous species and about half of them they credit Dan Hinkley with introducing into the trade. It's too bad he wasn't able to do that here for whatever reason since he lives in Washington State. Next year I probably will be more aggressive in removing the suckers before they get any size since they are interfering with my collection of hardy and semi-hardy banannas. John