Hi Beatrice, Glad to hear some of my seeds are germinating for you!! If you don't get enough of the pap hybrid cross to germinate I can send you a few more...your latest seeds are just now sending out roots. They swelled up larger than any other seeds I've seen before splitting, I just knew there was something kicking and screaming inside trying to get out!! The seeds from your first batch are doing very well also, I planted about 15 of the different crosses in total and I am very pleased as they seem to be doing so well. Many Thanks again,..Donna..:-) And as far as paper vs plastic we may never really know, it's probably just the seeds themselves and the moisture content or maybe some of them got a little damaged during their trip...

Kneewalker, your past experience sounds so normal and natural. Can a person still do that there? We're on the old Oregon Trail, or off it by a few feet, don't know exactly, have to go to the exhibit to see for sure. However, this was such a swamp nobody settled this spot. I've planted lots and lots of native trees here. But not only natives because I love lots of different kinds of trees. Aiming for maximum jungle beauty here, and green, green green green green. Did go to a few native nurseries 1st thing when bought house and bought whatever they had that might tolerate swampy conditions. Every tree except alders; the alders were too brown too early in the season. One little tree sold to us as a sitka spruce is actually a white spruce, but is doing well even though we planted it in a really wet spot. If these yellow flag iris would colonize our creeklets it would really help our water flow problem. Of course they've suddenly sprouted like gangbusters just where I thought they couldn't, on a raised bed in partial sun that has to be watered every day in summer. Thinking since all those seeds didn't do anything, this winter, January when most dormant, will dig up a lot of super crowded iris and plunk them down into the creeklets with a little 4-way-blend topsoil over them. And take the thousands of new fall seeds and throw them on the top of the ground in the creeklets. Somehow or other I'd like to visually see our creeklets which wander and thread throughout the yard stuffed with the waving fronds of these iris. It would mark the water so ppl wouldn't accidentally fall into the creeks. When the grass comes up they aren't visible. Of course if we didn't have ppl wander in through the gates and traipse around to gape we wouldn't have to worry about unwary folks falling into the water, LOL We and our yard guy know where the creeklets are. Spruceman posted a study showing that Giant Sequoias and then Norway Spruce do really well here. I've only planted 2 Norways because by the time I read that had already planted 17 Giant Sequoias plus lots of coast redwoods, dawn redwoods, sweetgums, deodars and other potentially enormous trees so just not enough room. Planted lots of thuja plicatas, Western Red Cedars, one of my favorite trees. There's not enough natural land left to worry about invasives. There's not enough rainfall accumulation anymore to get new trees established the way it used to be. The summers are hotter and longer and the sun more ferocious. If anything becomes invasive it will be something more drought-tolerant from warmer climes that is able to establish any foothold here -- and not even then. Man values his bulldozers and scraped scorched earth more than living plants. The natural world is decimated. The carrying capacity of the earth can no longer keep up with rapacious man's destruction. Just take a plane ride over this whole area and look. What was once verdant thick riparian green is now brown. Compare with old aerial photos. Devastated.

I'm used to getting cards and letters late, but this year my sisters and relatives in Croatia and Bosnia will be using Skype, free cam and especially voice chats, not perfect, but what is? Especially one for free. Gotten more annuals cleaned, mostly sweet autumn clematis, MG's, cannas, gingers and NBJasmine, it's been in 70-ies, just right to keep windows open!! Weather see-saws all over the world! Hope Santa doesn't get snowed in, ha. Making Shrimp and leftover Turkey Gumbo!! No okra or smoked ham, so it's not the traditional recipe, might serve it with brown rice or mashed potatoes. I'll share the recipe-s eventually, like it or not, lol GB-Bea

I am also having fun reading the newspaper that was used as packing material. Life in Minnesota is different from life in Philadelphia. To start, it seems most of the population there have last names that end in "sen" "son" or "gren", or start with "van" or have double vowels --"aa" or "uu". It seems to be a less hectic place and it's fun to read the birth announcements. Even in our local paper we don't have those sorts of sweet things. Only obituaries. Minnesota seems like a very nice place and, as Jessy can attest, I am picking up the accent, you betcha.