Cameron, I've been sitting here playing with my camera trying to figure out where the SCN is on the shooting dial, couldn't find it, so I went back and read the instructions - duh! On my camera, which is a little newer model, you go to the kids/pets setting, which is the default setting for scenes, then press the menu button, which leads you to the foliage setting - from there you can set the macro setting. Whew! Lisa, it has 7.1 megapixels. I haven't tried photographing any reds yet - I'll find something red, and see how it turns out. Sandy, my Christmas cassia/c. bicapsularis is in bloom now. Last year it turned cool/sometimes cold before the seed pods matured, so I didn't get any seeds, but if I do, I'll send you some. I'm going to start some c. obtusifolia from seeds next spring, which is the real favorite of the CSs, SOs, and little yellows, at least around here. I'll send you some of those seeds, which are already in the making, even if I don't get any Christmas cassia seeds. Christmas cassia is great, because it lives through the winter (here anyway) and it starts making new growth very early in the spring - I've raised SOs when the weather was still quite cool. You can't plant c. obtusifolia seeds until the ground and/or air temperatures are reasonably warm, but you get very fast growing plants that will grow to about 9' X 6' quickly if you fertilize them or add chicken manure to their soil - I get more cats on it than any other cassia/senna. By the way, I ordered my camera through Walmart - they say they sell it for less than the recommended price, and it was as low a price for that camera as I could find. You just order it online, and they send it to your nearest Walmart for you to go and pick up - it was hassle free. MissSherry

I think the first one is a variable cracker - like me? :) - and there are a lot of longwings/Heliconians, like in all butterfly houses. Anybody know what that gorgeous third one is? Sherry

Carol, I suspect you're right in thinking the rain got the onions because 6" of rain in two separate rainfalls shortly after I planted onions and potatoes got almost of them in the main garden, but not in the Peter Rabbit garden, which is at a higher elevation. The damage to my garden has mostly stopped since I sprayed with Bt last week, but I continue to find and squish an enormous amount of cutworms wherever I go. I'll be bringing you an Indigo Rose, Ildi and Matt's Wild Cherry to the swap so save room for those. Jay, Your plants will be toasty warm tomorrow with a forecast like that. They actually lowered our forecast high for tomorrow from 87 to 85, which might help a bit with the lettuce and snap peas, but probably not enough. Susan, Juliet probably is not a true grape, but there's not necessarily a category it falls into easily, so when it first came out people didn't know what to call it---so they called it a grape. I've noticed some newer tomatoes with about the same size and shape being called cherry roma types, although if they aren't dry paste-types, then that seems like a misnomer as well. You have to understand that when Santa came out it was truly revolutionary and hugely popular because it tasted so good and people loved it so much. So, every tomato breeder in the world was trying to breed the next "Santa" and I think Juliet likely came out of those efforts, as did a bunch of other hybrids that have come and quickly gone because their skin was too thick or their flavor too poor. I haven't tasted a grepe yet that's as good as Santa, and think maybe I never will. It is kind of like SunGold---many have tried to breed the "next" SunGold, but haven't come up with one yet that equals it or surpasses it. When it happens, I think it will be with one of the non-commercial crosses being done by folks aiming for flavor, versus commercially-bred ones where flavor is only one of their goals. Carol, To me, Juliet is just a bigger version of Red Jelly Bean, so if you've grown Jelly Bean, just imagine it larger. I dislike the thick skin on Juliet and Jelly Bean, but if you're raising them for dehydrating, it is irrlevant because that toughens the skin anyway. Paula, That was too cold and too close for comfort. Carol, I can answer that one for my earth sister and hope she won't mind that I do so. Paula's seed-starting efforts were side-tracked by her father's death and all the resulting time she has spent dealing with his estate. I'm bringing her a nice big batch of varieties I selected out for her and put into larger containers so they could get a bit bigger before she puts them in the ground. We're hoping that with large transplants going into her garden at the tail end of the recommended planting dates, she'll still get tomatoes at about the same time as usual. Susan, It was chilly here this morning too--only 47, but tomorrow should be a lot better. I'm not excited about tomorrow's high temps. Dawn

Thanks so much Devilwoman for making the link. I haven't learned that yet. THanks for the nice words about my pictures. Rich bought me a good camera last August for my B-day and so far I took over 10 thousand pictures. All those flowers in my pictures is ones we have here on the farm that have just bloomed. I keep posting more pictures there when I can and when more bloom