This actually turned into an interesting thread. two items - self-esteem and "education". Self-esteem as something to be concerned with came out of the 1960s generation when people were claiming that minorities can't do well because they were not held in high regard by "society". And that was expanded to cover all of the precious children, to the point that competition in any form was frowned on, whether it be baseball or academics. But self-esteem is self-reinforcing IF the child actually deserves to esteem himself or herself. As an example, I once asked my younger brother how he got to be so good in math. He wasn't sure, but he did mention that when he was hospitalized for a few weeks in third and fourth grades, there was talk of holding him back because of all the school he missed. That meant his twin sister would move ahead and he was going to have none of that. So he asked for his schoolbooks. Having no idea what the assignments were, he simply learned everything in the books. When he returned to school, he was so far ahead that they gave him the next year's assignments. He didn't particularly love math at that point, but with the students and teachers thinking he was so good, he liked the feeling and made sure to maintain it. Ended up getting masters degrees in math and electrical engineering and a PhD in physics. That was all of course, reinforced at home, but students end up living up or down to their definitions. So the idea was to boost self-esteem. And I think the big problem was that the boosters were looking at a result, not the means of getting there. So about 12 years ago Charles Kruthammer wrote an article titled something like "Feeling Good about Being Bad" and the gist of it was that he was quoting studies that showed Americans as failing when compared to European and many Asian children, but feeling prouder of themselves than any of those children. So I've always thought that the self-esteem thing was BS - get students good at something, anything, and self-esteem takes care of itself. As far as "education", that can be obtained in so many ways. I was one of the world's worst students for a number of reasons. I hated authority, didn't want to follow in the mold of my older or younger siblings, didn't respect my teachers, and was all around trouble. Initially I was miserable but when I started getting peer respect for being able to disrupt class cleverly, I spent all of my time figuring out how to cause trouble until I was finally kicked out for a while. I can't remember anything that I really learned in school after fourth or fifth grade except typing, which was the single most useful subject I ever took. But I had an advantage that most people didn't. My father was a world traveler fluent in about 9 languages and my mother was fluent in 3. Both of them were readers and when we were sitting around the dinner table my father would ask us what the capital of Turkey was or how to spell Bucharest or he would tell us about some historical event or something political or explain how something worked. From childhood, I would always read for a while before going to sleep. So when I was in 10th grade I knew as much about American history as our student teacher and I frequently corrected her and the other students laughed and I lost respect for her and that cycle wound ever tighter. It was stupid not least because I never really learned how to study "properly" and that put me at a disadvantage later in grad school and in law school. The point is that education can come from any number of sources. I've always felt, and still do, that for many people, schools are not the best way to provide an education. They work for a certain type of person. I'm certainly not knocking them or criticizing all teachers - I've even dated a few. But we waste a lot of money and talent by not looking for better ways to teach. The idea of one person talking to a room full of students has been around since Plato's time except that in his time, only the people who were greatly interested would be part of the group. So it was self-selected. What do we do with the others? Why can't we take a group of kids and have them build a boat? They can learn about wood, about engineering, about tools, about the seas, about history, about weather, and who knows what else? Or have them build a house? Note - my cousin, who is a builder but was a teacher for a while, actually did this. And I'm not talking about a "shop" class. I'm talking about a year-long project that will require calculating, writing, etc. They could even have a foreigner teach it and communicate only in another language. The closest to these things were maybe the yearbook or the school newspaper - both of which provided more in the way of "education" than the simple formal schooling did. We're smart in the US. It seems like we should be able to find some better way of providing education to more people.

That's awesome :) At that price, it's worth it to buy plenty to share or trade. Also, I've read freezing seeds until later use, even for years, extends their germination, so you could use them for years to come. I love seed sales. I was disappointed this year that none of the local stores I checked had seed sales, and I checked quite frequently. They went from dwindlling supplies at full price to removing all seeds suddenly. They pulled the seeds rather early too, I thought. There have been none to be found for the last month or two. I remember reading someone's post where they said some stores send their extras back to the manufacturers. I did find a bulb/watering can gift set that I think was supposed to be for kids on clearance. It has four different varieties of bulbs, so it was a pretty decent deal. I think most are for zone 7 and higher, so I may need to wait until spring to plant out though.

When someone says "Angel Trumpet" to me, my first question is "are you talking about brugmansia or datura?". I even had someone recently ask me about my datura plants. I don't grow datura....They were asking about my brugs. My guess is (and I don't know this person and have never purchased from her), that she's simply using the common names to try and sell her seeds. The majority of people out there refer to both brugmansia and datura as "angel trumpets". I've never heard "moonflower", but apparntly it's another common name for datura. Rsieminski, I am almost positive that your intent of this post was not to flame this seller, but do you guys realize how many people make their entire incomes selling on Ebay? I know it's well over 500,000, and a post like this could very well hurt someone in more ways than you know...

That's okay, the girls and guys will appreciate a good laugh! I think I may have gotten that story in a email..it's hilarious! I had to cross my legs when she mentioned ripping the strip off! It hurt just thinking about it. LOL