Quickpod, StatesvilleAppearance Committee has scheduled a garden tour in Statesville on May 6 & 7. There will be 6 gardens included and our garden is one of them. I have a lot of shade plants and natives with a natural waterfall (after the rains like today). I am active in the Town and Country Garden Club here in Statesville. We have about 20 members with many of them 70+. The tickets for the garden tour are $10 and includes all 6 gardens. You can buy the tickets at any of the homes. I will be glad to email you directions to our home. Nancy Here is a link that might be useful: Link to Statesville Garden Tour

The Tasmanian seeds from the Dudleys arrive in their first warm period, packaged in moist vermiculite. Very helpful that they have begun the process, and I think that is why their seeds are so successful. I immediately planted mine last year when rec'd in January and placed the seed pots outdoors in this mild Z8 where our temps will roughly mimic (an average) that of your refrigerator. I think it would also have been fine if I'd left them unplanted in their baggies at room temperature for several more days. It was about 8 - 10 weeks before they began to germinate after being placed outdoors, and germination continued for about a month. When several days had passed without further germination, I transplanted seedlings into individual pots and grew them on until October when they were of a size they could go into the ground in this milder climate. (Those seedlings were buried under several inches of snow, followed by an equally unusual ice storm last week and emerged with the thaw looking no worse at all for their experience)

Okay, I've got to apologize. Obviously the term 'hoosier' means something much different here in St. Louis. I assumed the word meant the same thing everywhere... till I read the replies to my post and realized that none of you had an inkling to what I was talking about. I wasn't referring to those of you from Indiana. Indiana hoosiers (a positive term) and Missouri hoosiers (a derogatory term) are very different. Wikipedia explains it best: n St. Louis, Missouri, the word is used in a derogatory fashion in similar context to "hick" or "white trash".[2] Thomas E. Murray carefully analyzed the use of "hoosier" in St. Louis, Missouri, where it is the favorite epithet of abuse. "When asked what a Hoosier is," Murray writes, "St. Louisans readily list a number of defining characteristics, among which are 'lazy,' 'slow-moving,' 'derelict,' and 'irresponsible.'" He continues, "Few epithets in St. Louis carry the pejorative connotations or the potential for eliciting negative responses that hoosier does." He conducted tests and interviews across lines of age and race and tabulated the results. He found the term ecumenically applied. He also noted the word was often used with a modifier, almost redundantly, as in "some damn Hoosier." In a separate section Murray speaks of the history of the word and cites Baker and Carmony (1975) and speculates on why Hoosier (in Indiana a "neutral or, more often, positive" term) should remain "alive and well in St. Louis, occupying as it does the honored position of being the city's number one term of derogation." A radio broadcast took up where Murray left off. During the program, "Fresh Air," Jeffrey Lunberg, a language commentator, answered questions about regional nicknames. He cited Elaine Viets, a Post-Dispatch columnist (also quoted by Paul Dickson), as saying that in St. Louis a "Hoosier is a low-life redneck, somebody you can recognize because they have a car on concrete blocks in their front yard and are likely to have just shot their wife who may also be their sister."[2] "Old timers" from southwest St. Louis County have their own history for use of the term. In the mid-1950s, Fenton, Missouri was at the then-rural southwest rim of the county. It was during this time that Chrysler Corporation built a large automobile assembly plant in the city of Fenton and closed a plant it had been operating in Indiana. Many former employees of the closed Indiana plant moved to Fenton for employment; so many, in fact, that entire subdivisions of new homes (with streets named after Chrysler models such as "Fury" and "Belvidere") sprang up south of the plant, near what was then US Route 66. It became something of a local joke to refer to the new arrivals from Indiana as "hoosiers", and before long, anyone from the rural edges of St. Louis County was considered such. I learned something new today. I guess I should have used "hillbilly" instead... but "hoosier" is just the word we always use.

No, there are ZERO listed for Arkansas. Consequently, we are writing letters and making phone calls. It's hard to believe they are too chicken. If one of our senators did one and she held true to form, she would read a pre-written answer to a question, whether the answer fit the topic well or not. If she dared to ad-lib an answer, her staff would hustle her off. I hope she's a last-term senator. Here is a link that might be useful: You can look here for your state....