I've been lurking here for a couple of years, but don't post much. Too many forums and too little time. :) My website is taking longer than I had hoped. I'm rebuilding all my company event websites right now so my garden website was put on hold for a week or two. Our recent freeze is going to delay my online store for a couple of months. All my plants are starting to rebound but it is going to take a while. I have a bunch of great crosses I plan to register this summer and release to the public in late summer. Fred

Thanks everyone. I hope you will feel free to go to the rest of the website and check it out, and even sign my guestbook. It sends a positive message to my sponsors (RootsWeb and Ancestry.Com) Who knows...we could be related! http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hindorff/ Libby, isn't it interesting to have records that go back so far? I do not have all my information posted on my website. Too much information! I am so behind in updating it right now that I am plum ashamed of the state it is in right now. Waiting on a certain person who lives in this house to fix my computer like was promised three years ago. (Am I patient or what?) It is running now, but I don't have all the tools I need to upload my files and web pages, or edit photos and other images, so here I sit, using his 'puter until MDHM (My Dear House Mate) gets 'round to completely restoring mine. Gird Grape I grew from cutting - pretty blooms in Spring are a promise for grapes in the Fall: GG -The grapes taste like a grape, of course, but different from any other wild grape I've tasted thus far. They are only native to Southern California, although they have been cultivated elsewhere. Grannie made jelly and jam out of them back in the day, but I've always liked them best right off the vines. Tiny, sweet bead-like jewels. They have that wild twang to them. The jam comes out kind of brownish-purple. Not pretty like Welch's, but it tastes really good. Grannie's grapes have always tasted better to me tho', especially when I was a little girl. :) Another view of my Gird Grape: Interesting side story about Grannie's Gird grape vine. Immediately after Grannie died at the age of 102 yrs old in 1998, her grapevine began to wither and die. The last I saw of it, it was not much more than a stump. It used to cover a whole huge arbor that Grampa built as a shade over her washing tubs (and later wringer washing machine), the rinse tubs and her long wooden table he built for her where she folded her line-dried clothes and linens. Southern California is very arid, so the washing/rinsing water was never wasted, but used to irrigate the Gird grape and the citrus orchard, figs, & other trees and Grannie's big veggie garden plot. It was all planted in terraces on the slope of the hill below the house and the wash arbor. The wind blew up the hill and through the arbor and it was cool and pleasant under there. She spent many hours sitting out there in the shade on hot summer days. She often wrote her letters out there. She wrote to dozens of people on a weekly or monthly basis. You risked your life if she caught you picking her grapes without permission, tho', let me tell you! I saw how she got onto my cousins once. I never wanted to provoke the wrath of Grannie, so I always asked...but she didn't always say yes. "Darned kids, anyhow. Always comin' up here wantin' everything we have! You'd eat me and Grampa out of house and home if we'd let ya!" She actually loved that we came up there to see her and Grampa. That was just her way. Annie

NHL, the forum is really slow in the early winter/holiday/late fall months. It will pick up with the alphabet. The last couple of years, Paul has done hosta leaf bingo after the first of the year. The growers put out their new catalogs right after the first of the year. Then everyone starts planning their buy list and comparing notes. Then us potheads start getting pips in late March and posting photos. About then, we'll get the snow birds back. Then we will whine about the late freezes. Then, a little later, we'll get a bunch of newbies and we get to play the ID game for a couple of months. There are always HVX/disease/bug questions in the early summer, too. It's cyclical, but pretty much the same from year to year. Give it time, it will pick up. Now's a good time to post questions, as the questions stay on page 1 for a long time and the old timers and knowledgeable growers who check in can answer them. bk

Thank you all! They're going on tour so you'll have to watch for tour dates. I'm so happy for them. He's worked his whole life for this. He finally got into a good band with great a great manager.