I am looking for an old-fashioned red leaf canna, flower is red also 6-7' tall. Had them years ago, gave many away and have since lost the bulbs having the red leaves. Now in Fl. and would love to buy them. Never knew their exact name. Tried Black Knight and had poor results compared to the old fashioned canna. Have had good luck in the past with Costco bulbs and bloomingbulbs.com. Good prices and great about satisfying the customer.

Hi just wanted to update you NYC dwellers on my experience with Plessers in LI. I ordered an undercounter refridgerator and a DW on 11/29. I cancelled the delivery once because I wasn't ready to receive and rescheduled for Dec 27. On Dec.23 I had to leave the country (2 months)because of a death in the family. When I returned I rescheduled for Mar 1. Plessers delivery called the night before the delivery to tell me a time frame of 6-7am(never had anyone do that before, usually it's "sometime between 8-5")and called that morning to tell me a more exact time 7:15am. They were on time ! I paid for gold delivery since I'm in a walkup(2nd fl)and curbside wouldn't work. I found all of the customer service staff(Patrick, Anthony, Jessica) helpful and pleasant to deal with. Also they provide their own 10year part warranty. I'm not sure how it works with other dealers but I was very happy that I was not penalized for delaying my delivery.

Oldhousegal, I am in Portland, Ore! I haven't gotten the soapstone yet -- just ordered it on Monday. They told me it will take 2-3 days to leave the warehouse, and then another 5-10 days of transit. Our cabinets will be here in 2 weeks, so I was holding off on getting the soapstone until we had an ETA on the cabinets so that we didn't have too much construction stuff clogging up our staging area (the garage). I will post pics once the stone comes, though! I ordered 4 slabs of Barocca. I was also told by several places that soapstone was not readily available in Portland, but you can find it at Pentel (on NW Yeon). You can visit their warehouse and see the slabs in person -- the slabs are beautiful, but they only have one variety. The frustrating thing is that Pentel only works with fabricators, so they will give you a list of fabricators, but won't tell you how much a slab costs! Annoying. Our contractor has an account through CFM, who is one of the fabricators on the list at Pentel, so we asked them for a quote -- they said it was going to be $4,700 for the soapstone, including installation. Ordering from Texiera and getting my carpenters (who I love) to cut and install will cost about half of that. So far I have been pretty impressed with Texiera. They have been very responsive to my emails, and phone calls. The sample pack that I ordered arrived within a few days, and they were happy to answer all of my questions. I ordered my slabs, but could not find a way to order the tinted epoxy w/o ordering the entire DIY kit (my carpenters have the necessary blades already), so I emailed them -- they got back to me within 10 minutes and added just the epoxy to my order.

"This may come too late to be of use to you, but call Marvin in McLean (703 506 3650) and ask to speak with Bruce Bowen. After being hustled, ignored or played by window guys (including some Marvin reps), I found Bruce to be responsive, helpful and interested in what I wanted for the house, not what Marvin wanted to sell me." Thanks,,,I'll call him when I return from my trip.