Hi christinmk, Welcome to The Seed Exchange! Boy, you really did your homework here. Congrats and Thank You! The Seed Exchange is quite active it seems all year. I am usually more active, very late fall, or winter when I hve more 'free' time. Also, a lot of seeds in the more northern zones are not collectible until quite late in the year. I remember it was late Nov I think anyway, when the butterfly bush seed pods split, so they could be harvested. I learned long ago to never harvest them until they are dried and split, as they won't properly split and release the seeds if harvested too soon. When mailing, make sure to tape seeds to inside so they stay flat. So, one ships the bubble envelope with another/other seed envelopes inside? Bubble env with regular env holding the seeds? Correct? I tape the little seed baggies to a piece of paper before slipping it into the Bubblie. That helps keep them under 3/4" thick, and from shifting. See Mailing Costs for Bubble Envelopes (BE) BE under 3/4" should go as Large Envelope rates which is less than those over 3/4"-Parcel rates. Members use the little plastic craft baggies (found in the craft section at WM), or paper coin envelopes, or home made ones of paper. What took you so long to get off your beaten path, and find your way to the Seed Exchange anyway? Beware though....Know you're addicted to Seed Exchange-s...when... and then there are the Seed Enablers here too. Sue

Thanks, Dellis. I received a message as well, with no means to reply. Josh

My REAL email is the one you see here, and the same as my user name, except with @aol.com added to it, and I don't get as many spams on it as you're saying you do, Alicia... maybe if you count the ones AOL automatically sends to my SPAM folder, but they're pretty good, over time, about filtering out SPAM. There was a TIME, however, before AOL DID get good at that, when I'd get 15, 20, 30 SPAMs a day... Of course nowadays I get lots of ad emails each week, but that's because I've bought things online from Circuit City... and Best Buy... and shopped online with Wal-Mart although I've never made an online purchase with them, and I tell them ALL it's OK to send me their email specials because it's A LOT EASIER to delete them when I'm NOT in the market for something than it is to catch the specials some other way when I AM (and I got some pretty good savings over the holidays that way, too!). Of course someone ALSO stole American Express number and charged more than $10,000 on it -- all in SPAIN -- back in September... But I don't think they got it online... I think they looked over my shoulder when I was standing in a line somewhere waiting to use it, so now I keep it covered if it's in my hand, unless I'm swiping it... At any rate, THEY caught the biggest charges as "not looking right" and notified US, and then I caught the rest online, and we weren't responsible for ANY of them... which is really nice (except that some fancy 4-star hotel in Spain and a Spanish airline got stuck with back-charges, but then I guess they should be more careful accepting charges). Now I need to go ahead and post this so I can check out some of those neat, tempting links you posted, Ms. X, which, as usual, I neglected to check BEFORE I started "SPOUTING" (or is that "sprouting?") :-) I figure the truth of the matter is that if you're a target for some reason, or MAKE yourself a target for some reason, the only way you can be safe from internet attacks is to not be connected to the internet, but with so many of us online, most of us aren't real "targets," contrasted with big corporations and the very wealthy, etc. I guess in some ways it pays to be "the little guy," huh? Jeff

It doesnt have "private messages" but if you click on "my page" of the member you can click on the "send me an e-mail" button.