My goal is to post some pics here. I have over 50 that I grow in containers and are now curing and drying - waiting for wood shavings. My one year olds are staying in their dirt for the first winter. I was pretty successful keeping the tags with the bulbs. Only two remain "anonymous". I used corrugated blueberry containers for storage. I would like to learn more about what people use to stake their tuberous begonias to prevent the canes from breaking as they get large and wet from rain etc. I will post soon.

Like Zeffy, I hated the puter. I was living with my ex who had one. We ended up getting internet, I had a Hydrangea that wouldn't bloom and some how ended up on one of the gardening forums. I wasn't allowed to garden with him, I used to sneak roses into the garden. He used to be so mean that he'd have to dig up the part of garden where I had a few roses. I had a Gene Boerner; went to my dad's with the kids one day, came home & it was destroyed. No clue what he did to it. Ended up having him removed, started coming to rose forum.. that was back before user names. Think the name I used was SBA@NJBell. At one time there were a lot of us named Sue on the regular rose forum, we used to sign our name OOTO (one of the other) Sues. At some point GW started growing, we had to make user names. I remember how ticked off some of us were lol I wanted something original, took me days to think of Rose Lover - and making it into Roselvr. Been through a lot here. Many people coming & going, some of free will some to "Disney". I've been "Spiked" many times. I used to hate waking up knowing either I'd be Spiked or Disney'd. There was a time when saying the name Veldfire would send your post to Disney, or you to Disney. A lot of people left to go to his forum. Although he was banned, he was able to hide his IP and get here to read. lol GW lost a lot of people to his forum. A lot stayed there, never returning. I've seen vendor's and hybridizers that have come here and given their time, banned because someone didn't like something that was said. We've lost a lot of great people. Before Veldfire there was another forum on Delphi, haven't been there in years, we lost a lot of good people there too. It was one hybridizer who started it I think.. We also had a guy named Sharif from Bangladesh who used to post other people's pictures. I think Anne got him banned one day, she finally proved he was stealing people's pictures & posting as his own. I'd already been "Spiked" a few times due to him, almost banned. We lost Rosesense back then. I met GW members. Cindy Tx, met her in New Orleans. Sue Belle; Helen FL, Karl; who saved our butts in New Orleans when my hubby left the travelers checks in a restaurant. Karl was able to tell them who it belonged to. Baldo, Anne, The gal who writes the column for New Orleans; her name escapes me right now. I've met a lot of nice NJ people Anyone remember Kang?

I think the first real item I made was a yellow plaid roll-up sleeve blouse in Home Ec. I had no clue that matching plaids would be that involved. Since I was in high school in the 60's I remember making a 2 piece lined wool suit like Jackie Kennedy and of course had the matching pill box hat. Next I made a dress out of a pretty green dotted swiss. We didn't have room to cut out our garments in the Home Ec. cottage so we were taken into the cafeteria to use those tables. When I started making my dress I realized that I had not only lost the back pattern piece to my skirt but also the fabric. My Mother and I went back to the store to buy more but they were out of that color. I ended up replacing the back of my skirt with white organdy and applied a white bow in the back of the waist. What had started out as a rather plain dress became a nice church dress which I wore for quite a while. The dress that gave me such fits turned out to be a favorite of mine. Now I really LOVE to sew and also enjoy "thinking outside the box". Some things are made special because of the work involved. It makes you appretiate the results.

Jay I would dying to know what Chilean trees are surviving for them in TN and AL. I have tried pretty much all the various Eucryphias from PNW nurseries over the years. They either die in the summer, or if they for some reason make it through a summer, they die in winter. But as I've seen with ungrafted 'Nancy Evans', the reason they aren't making thru winter is PRIMARILY simply aren't growing enough in the summer. Cause I'm talking even pretty mild winters. Alas, with a weirdo southern hemisphere plant like this, there's no heat resistant rootstock to graft it onto! Grafted 'Nancy Evans' SEEMS much hardier than ungrafted simply because it is growing a strong root system during the summer! However as I learnt with Chusqueas it pays to keep trying. C. culeou and and I think I tried a C. andina at some point, decline pretty rapidly in summer here. I suppose because of its broader native range, C. gigantea had no problems with hot humid summers and continued to grow through them. It was also at least as winter hardy as my poor old Thamnocalamus tessellatus, that has gotten pretty big during strings of mild winters only to be cut down during cold years. Alas, the damn things flowered in 2020! Just as it was getting established! I didn't bother collecting seed because I worried about getting quality plants with such a narrow gene pool. Hopefully Ian at Desert Northwest offers it soon from fresh seed. (all bamboos of a species flower in the same year in case anyone doesn't know this) Floral - 95/96 had been a very cold winter in Scotland although the owner of a large UK nursery told me it wasn't in the south, so you might not remember it as such. Supposedly got down to the mid single digits F...around -15C. Anyhow, the Eucryphia X nymansensis 'Nymansay' in that picture was a little big singed on its northern flank but it didn't stop it from blooming profusely. It was probably 1/2 as big then. But it looked much better than the Cordylines. All of them in town were burnt down to the lowest 3' of trunk if not the ground. Same at the presumably slightly milder St. Andrews. OTOH I saw big undamaged cordies at Culzean Castle on the milder west coast of Scotland. The nice thing about this view is because this is a major thoroughfare of Edinburgh you can see the street views all the way back to 2008, and witness the slow but steady expansion of the tree. My bedroom was the room in the leftmost of the 4 buildings, above the blue door. Check out August 2019: THANKS FOR PLAYING!