garry, 'Silver Swan' (also 'Tasmanian Tiger' and 'Glacier Blue') are all variegated forms of E. characias and therefore quite a bit less hardy than any hybrids like 'Helena's Blush' or x martinii. The variegation also tends to reduce hardiness and offers limitations on vigor as well - E. characias in my climate tends to be a BIG, robust, freely seeding plant that takes extremes of winter in stride. Not so for any of the variegated forms.

I'm opening them alright, but I can't post to the 'coldest temps' thread. So here's what I wrote for that...just a test to see if I can post here... I'm not sure how my husband got the flowers to the wedding without them freezing, since the car certainly never got warm that day. Fortunately, we were poor college students and just had carnations--they are certainly hardier than many flowers usually used for weddings. One Valentine's day before we were married, he walked to the florist's and bought me a rose, and then walked back with it. It was a long time before I had the heart to tell him that it was frozen solid and turned black and fell apart the minute it thawed out. He hasn't bought me many roses since! I was just in Fairbanks for the weekend--the flowers were beautiful, but the smoke was awful. It was good to get home. Right now I'm in the house taking a break from the heat outside. It's relatively cool in the house at 81 degrees. It's 80 in the shade, and 97 in the sun. I didn't take the thermometer out til just now...who knows how hot it was earlier. Unforturnately, I'm redoing the strawberry bed, and it is in the sun all day. Right now it is 100.8 on the front deck. And I did not set the thermometer in direct sun. Not good weather for transplanting strawberries!

My seeds were delayed in the mail so I re-mailed them as soon as I could, which was past the deadline, and Willy said it wasn't a problem. Shortly thereafter, I received an envelope stuffed with many wonderful, different kinds of seeds. Thanks again for all the work you put into this Willy. The way did your swap was very nice, and many people seemed to have liked it, and I would like to host a swap similar to this one but for ornamental (indian) corn, gourds/squashes, pumpkin seeds, and any other seeds that can be grown and used for Fall decorations next year. Thanks again for the wonderful seeds and inspiration, Willy. ~LilyLoverLynn~

I deleted as many apps as I could when I got my phone, so a factory reset would actually give me more apps. I looked through them again last night, and I think I have deleted as many as I can. I tried to delete Instagram and Google Hangouts, and the best I could accomplish was to de-activate them. There's a app called "Lookout" which is supposed to be a protection thing, "in conjunction with Sprint" which is my service provider. Any real protection costs money, which I would be OK with spending but I have no idea if "Lookout" is any good or will not be a gateway for more junk "notifications" on my phone. I have managed to stop the vibrating for Yahoo e-mails and FB posts, but I still get FB pop ups when I turn on my phone. The ads seem to be intermittent. The only app I have that has pop up ads is my voicemail, which I may look into changing. It was the default app that came with my phone. You have to pay to get it "ad free." I suspect the FB app is the gateway for some of this stuff, but I do use it, and I liked that with my smartphone I could take a picture and then post it, unlike before when I had to download the photos from my computer at home. I like my weather apps, but they could be a source of ads. Another app that is suspect would be Yahoo e-mail. I use that too though, so I dunno . . . It kind of burns me because I pay for my phone quite handsomely and it seems like I shouldn't have to put up with ads. This will only get worse because too many people are using the Internet to circumvent paying for content . . . and I suppose free communication that the Web allows was too good to be true for long. Someone has to pay for the infrastructure and services . . .