Love the potholders! The wall hanging is a wonderful idea, I remember my kids and grands really getting excited about seeing how much they had grown. My neighbor is German and she tells me our beer doesn't taste good to her - too much carbonation, and they do drink it at room temp. Have a great time Linda, I would love to go to Germany. Rosa

Funny story about that... A few years ago I went to spend a week with DH's (very thrifty) aunt in Florida, helping her move from her home into a retirement center. I knew there wouldn't be an opportunity to do laundry, since she had sold her W/D, so I brought my oldies, disposing of them each day in the garbage can outside the kitchen door. Imagine my surprise when I got back to her house the last day for the final load, finding my old undies laundered and IRONED, nicely folded on top of my suit case. She had somehow found them and hand laundered them! I got one of her (many, over the years) "waste not want not" lectures, along with a stern warning that the size of those undies would surely bring me kidney and bladder problems, and that people might get the wrong idea if they saw them. Not sure who she was referring to, and I chose not to go there. LOL She is gone now, and though it seemed like all of us had times when she took us to task over one thing or another, she was a dear lady, and we miss her! I guess my oldies weren't old enough for her, and they were put back into service for a while. I just didn't have the heart to dispose of them again just then. Elisabeth

I've also got about 30 four-inch tall maximums I started from seed this spring - Sift finely ground pine bark through a kitchen sieve with a wider mesh, and mix it 1:1 with moist loose peat moss. Wet it well, and microwave it for 5 minutes (!), let it cool, and put it into a 2-inch deep high-dome propagator; I've got a few smaller ones that I bought off of Greenhouse Megastore, which have worked exceptionally well. Spread the seed out evenly over this, and mist with distilled or reverse osmosis wate, and set the tray under a fluorescent light fixture, timed for 16 hours. Seedlings will germinate quite readily (My seed was from 1996!), and grow slowly. After the cotyledons expand, sift a very thin layer of pine bark over the seedlings - Just enough to fill in between the seedlings, NOT completely cover them - so they don't fall over when you mist them. After two or three true leaves have formed, mist them once per week with a low-nitrogen, high-phosphorus fertilizer; soluble tomato fertilizer works very well. After the first few leaves have fully expanded, prick them out into individual 2-1/4" liner pots, using a mix of 1/4" or less pine bark mulch and moist loose peat moss, at a ratio of 3:1 respectively. Mix Osmocote 18-6-12 into the soil at about 3 lbs per cubic yard, as well as Micromax at about 1.5 lbs per cubic yard. (There are about 7 gallons in a cubic foot and 27 cubic feet in a yard, should be able to work the math backwards from that). If you start them in January, they should be ready to transplant in March. Give them about 1/8 teaspoon of 3-4 month release Osmocote in June, and they will be nice little seedlings with a good, healthy bud by October. I have actually had success planting these the same year in the ground - You'll lose a few, but the remaining ones will definitely be tough! As they bud out in the spring, you'll want to pinch off the main terminal (as painful as that sounds), forcing the plant to put out multiple shoots. Do this every year for the first 5 years or so, and you'll have a really full, well-branched Rhododendron! I also give the plants 2 tablespoons of hollytone in the spring, maybe up to 1/8 cup in 2 applications once they've been in the ground 2 seasons, since our high rainfall leaches the soil of nutrients pretty quickly. They respond really well with this! The same method can be used for native azaleas, as well - I've got a lot of Rhododendron calendulaceum, R. arborescens and R. prinophyllum seedlings this year using the same tricks. Our native soil is a loamy to gravelly clay that ranges from about 5.8-6.5 PH, hollytone keeps the soil within the range that Rhododendrons like, especially if the plants are mulched with pine bark.

Here are 3 places for plant lovers in St. Pete area: Saturday Morning Market Where: Downtown on the waterfront Saturdays, 9am - 2pm Huge and varied. Includes great plant booths - organic, herbs, vines, unusual. Live music, great food. Free. Park for $5 nearby. Florida Botanical Gardens Where: Largo, near Indian Rocks Beach Free, year round. Except, tonight begins the: Holiday Lights in the Gardens November 23 thru December 30, 2018 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Suggested donation $5 for ages 13 and over. I like to go in late afternoon to see the plants in daylight, then stay as the lights come on. They made $17,000 last year with this event and it seems well spent: many more lights, fresh blooming plantings, succulents area expanded, and expansion of boardwalk through a northern wetland. (I lucked into seeing the lights being tested a week ago... gardens looked the best I have seen them). Then I like to go to a reserved dinner spot outdoors at Guppy's in Indian Rocks! Candlelight Tour of Homes Where: Historic Old Northeast Neighborhood, just north of downtown St. Pete. When: December 9, Sunday 3pm to 8pm This sells out - get tickets online asap. Lushly landscaped historic neighborhood (houses are pretty close together).