Ngraham, I did hesitate over the Commander in Chief. Too many lilies in the bag, too. I would rather buy onesies. If they ARE asiatics I will be up to my ears in that variety in no time anyway. I wonder why they always seem to be sold in multiples? Now if they were begonias, why, then Id need a bag full. (I DID need begonias, and those were one per bag!) I can buy them one at a time at my local lily society, but the price will be at a premium too. I have wondered about my Monte Negro. I have seen others post pictures here and mine does look a bit different. On mine the petals are narrow, too. Thats one thing I really dont like in a lily. Thanks for the encouragement about the daylily choice. I have no idea where Ill put this poor plant. I will probably have to pot it up too: I dont think it will hold out until May for me. About Star's Favorite: its a tall rangy one, floppy stemmed too. (I dont really have any all day sun, that may factor in) I needed my tallest stakes for it. But it produced more flowers than any other I had last year. Individual flowers had beautiful form, too. I like to cut individual flowers and put them singly into ikebana holders. When a flower stands alone perfect form is more important. There are several varieties with names beginning with "Stars" : I tried one that is more solid pink but it did not produce nearly as well. rolacoy: in your zone 8 the dahlias might even over winter in the ground. The lilies might need vernalization. Ive never lived anywhere but Zone 5 so take certain things for granted: like which bulbs will work for me. Maybe there is a targeted forum for your part of the country. I have a cousin who moved from Chicago to Texas (I forget where in Texas). I know she cant grow tulips, but iris and daylilies do phenomenally well. She is the only person I know personally with whom Ive compared notes. Roly, I have not tried most of those. Freesia, Ranunculus, Sprekelia, Amarillys belladona, Agapanthus and Tigridias. I know they had some but I tend to skim over the ones I know nothing about. In my zone Im not sure I could get most of those going. I am always tempted by Anemone de Caen but they are not hardy here, and I dont know how they take to digging up and replanting like the dahlias do. I dont have luck keeping dahlias over but re-buy them every year. Begonias I can keep over: trying callas this year too.

WOW! Thanks for all of the great replies everyone! gardenspider - I posted my zone on this topic as DFW. I guess I assumed everyone knew that was Dallas/Fort Worth...lol. Thanks for the great info by the way! brandon7 - I was at HD yesterday and didn't see a thing. Perhaps I'll call around to a few in the area since they don't all stock the same things. Were they in the perennials section? nancy86 - If I don't find any this weekend, I'll get your email address and send you a SASE next week. Thanks for the great offer! Well, I picked up my tropical milkweed and am a bit disappointed in how it looks. It's got three tall (around 1.5-2' stalks) with just a few leaves on the very top portions. I expected it to be full all the way down, so not many leaves for the monarchs. Hopefully I can find some of the swamp milkweed at HD to add to this bed. By the way, I'm completely redoing this bed and could use some advice. Here is what I plan to plant: Ends - One end has a huge deep pink butterfly bush, the other end has a potted duranta (on the edge of my patio). Back - I plan to plant the milkweeds on one side and some summer phlox on the other (bought 2 of the John Fanick tonight). I also have one purple liatris that I'll put somewhere in the back or middle section. Middle section - so far I have two verbena bonariensis, two purple cone flowers and one black-eyed susan (will center that one since it's the only non-pink/purple in this bed) Front - deep pink (almost red) pentas and a few small other annuals to fill between. I have a hard time deciding where to put everything because almost everything is small right now, and since I've never planted these, I don't really know how they grow. I know I can always move them around later if I need to. Thanks again for all of the great advice!

Suebot - don't think i'm going to tell you anything that somebody else hasn't said, but since i've had too much experience with deer & rabbits, i figured i'd concur with the remedies that worked for me. i used to live/learned to garden on nantucket and martha's vineyard, where the deer are at least as unreasonably tame and probably more abundant than they are in ct. i've heard stories of people standing 10 ft away from them yelling at them while they chomp on their hydrangea flower buds. one woman i was talking to claimed she saw the deer attacking her dalmation!! anyway, my first thought about your original message was are you sure all damage is due to deer and not rabbits? - when they stand on their hind legs, they can eat quite high - on a couple of my client's properties on the islands, i had more problems with bunnies than deer, especially with my daylilies & echinacea. so, i also found success with the deer away spray products; i can't remember which one i used, but i believe it had garlic & mint in it and i actually liked the way it smelled. the directions said to spray every couple of weeks (??), but i found that i had to spray every couple of days or so & definitely after a rain. it was pretty time consuming. unfortunately, my other success was fencing in the gardens. i just tried to be decorative about it - i used nice cedar posts with caps, bird netting @ 4' high (you can't really see it, so the garden still looks nice), i hung rope along the top of the netting (for a nautical look...). I did throw netting on top of the gardens in the spring until things grew too tall, but i have to admit, the deer hopped in a couple of times (- that would've been a mess i kind of would have liked to see). i now live in maine and have a large cutting garden in my back yard, a good distance from my house and i use the bird netting as the fencing (simply because it was the only fencing i could find that would be high enough in one piece) and it works (doesn't handle snow load, though). i see deer in the back and they walk right around the garden. chipmunks are now my problem. unfortunately, my true feeling is that if the deer want to get to something, they will. sorry to be so lengthy, good luck. just out of curiosity, do you have phlox and is it being eaten - that always gets destroyed the worst for me. -mara

Thought I would give a quick update as to how my online purchase went now that everything has been installed and up and running for a few weeks. I initially placed the full order at Goedekers for three Bosch appliances - 500 Series 37" induction cooktop, 500 Series 30" convection wall oven and an 800 Series dishwasher that takes a custom pattern, The cooktop and oven are the newer Bosch designs. I paid the extra $100 for the white glove service so that the appliances would be placed in my garage. The savings from buying online were substantially better than purchasing local even leaving state sales tax out of the argument. At the time I placed the order, the folks at Goedekers told me it would be 2-3 weeks before everything would arrive. That would be perfect timing as that would put the arrival date right around the time they would be required for install. A day or two after I placed the order, the cooktop and dishwasher shipped to the local depot here in Columbus. Now they were just waiting for the oven and then they would deliver them to my house. I waited another week and noticed that the oven had still not shipped so I called Goedekers to find out why. It turns out Bosch was having production issues and was behind in filling orders for the new model ovens. I also confirmed this with Bosch who were reasonably confident that production would be back up and running in time to meet my timeline. Another week passed and still no shipment so called Bosch again. They told me things were looking like they would be delayed again. At this point I decided to look elsewhere. Goedekers kindly removed the oven from the order and granted a full refund. At the time, no one could get the new Bosch wall ovens so was thinking of getting a GE instead. I stumbled across a place online called buy-appliances.com which is the electronic store front for Frederickon's Tire & Appliances located in Sheffeild Alabama. They didn't have the latest Bosch wall oven either but they did have an the prior model in an un-opened box at a few hundred less than what the new model would have cost. Even after the $100 I had to pay for shipping it was till a decent savings over the new model. Those folks were great to deal with. I think I placed the order Thursday morning and it arrived Monday. So everything eventually arrived in the nick of time. It was installed a couple weeks ago and so far everything is working great! Kitchen still needs backsplash, some shelving, dishwasher panel, lighting and a few other odds and ends installed which should be completed over the next couple of weeks. The one unfortunate thing about the purchase, and this would have happened regardless of the purchase being online or local is that Bosch had a 10% rebate program going on if you bought at least 3 of their appliances. My original order would have qualified for this and been worth around $400. The catch is that they had to be all on one purchase invoice and from the same retailer. The only rebate I ended up qualifying was $50 for the dishwasher. I should also mention that the day after I placed my order for the prior year wall oven at buy-appliances.com, Goedekers called me back to say Bosch was now shipping the ovens and I could have had it on time! So a bit of a disappointment there but I was on a timeline and had to change the order with the information I had at the time. Regardless, we are very happy with the performance of these appliances. Neither one of us had ever cooked on induction and bought this solely on information we read on this site. The wall oven is excellent as well and like the idea that it is the prior model so hopefully any problems have been worked out although from what I gather reading reviews, these ovens seem to be quite reliable.