Hi all, My first plant was an African violet. My grandmother was at fault. It was 1979 and I was about 23 years old and in college. I decided I would like to have a house plant and went over to her place to get some pothos cuttings. She grew wonderful looking pothos like nobody I've ever seen since. Anyway she was really thrilled that I was interested in having of houseplant and cut me several good lengths of pothos stems. When we were done with that she took me over to the window and showed me an African violet. She told me that I could take one of those leaves, put it in a glass of water, and that it would grow new plants from the base of the stem. I thought to myself, "no way", but I took a couple of those leaves home, stuck them in a glass of water as she instructed and indeed after couple months little plantlets started to grow from the bottom of the stems. I then planted them in African violet soil and had two plants. I soon took more leaves and started even more African violets. I thought it was such a coup how I was able to produce these "free" plants. Although by the time I bought the pots and soil those plants were not free. lol I then started propagating other plants. I even grew a lemon tree from a lemon seed I had harvested when making lemonade one time. My surprise was that the thing had thorns. Even though I liked my plants I can say that I was really in love with them. That would come later. I graduated from college and married a girl who was in ROTC and went into the army six months later. She was immediately sent to different schools and we traveled around the country to three different places in less than a year. Keeping plants going under those conditions was not very good and I lost a lot of plants, but not my African violets. I wound up in Washington, DC and worked for what was pretty much a white collar "sweat shop". It wasn't uncommon for me to work 60 to 70 hours a week. I needed somewhat of a diversion occasionally though and I found that diversion to be houseplants. I was very lucky to share a corner office with a couple of other people. The sunlight was incredible, and the windows were tinted so that the sun was not too harsh. I bought several starter plants and had them around my desk. To make a long story short I had a spider plant that was just magnificent and I had a Swedish Ivy that was to die for. The Swedish Ivy hung from a 9 foot ceiling and was basically a pillar all the way to the floor. I could not get my arms around the circumference of the plant. Anyway that's when my love of plants really blossomed. I continued to purchase and propagate African violets and had several to give away. My wife, who would eventually become my ex wife, and I moved to Denver. I then became acquainted with other gesneriad cousins of African violets. I went to African violet and gesneriad shows annually and met several people who grew these plants. I love all of my plants but my first love is African violets and their gesneriad cousins. Larry

Cardinal flower was my first guess too. Karen, thanks for sharing the picture again. It is just beautiful. Did you save seeds from any of the coleus? I am overwintering some I had this year as an experiment, but I didn't get any of the dark burgundy ones, that would match my front door. You have a great eye for design, which I lack. I have to have my daughter help me, who knows nothing about plants, but has a designers eye. We're a great team! I brought in a Kong coleus and I think I will get some seeds from that, hopefully, if you would like to do a trade.

If you do a search on your own GardenWeb name you'll get an idea of what we've lost. I admit I've been here a long time (since March 2001) and have probably accumulated more posts than most, so maybe it bothers me more, but I feel like I've lost part of my history. Before the crash I had over 600 posts! Now when I search for my name I come up with 33. (No, no, I didn't count them! It tells you have many postings were found.) Maybe if we all send a request they'll try harder to reinstate our old posts. Go to the Home page and scroll down to the bottom. Click on "Contact Us" and send them an email. I know they listen to us, even if they don't respond. It's worth a try. Kate (I guess this is post #34. I feel like a Newbie!)

The reason you want thousands of non local hits on any blog is so it goes up in the search engines so that when someone Googles your farm name that is what comes up at the top of the first page of the search and not things unrelated to your blog. if your blog doesn't show up in the first 10 entries few to no people will ever find it through a search 9and that is how 95% of the readers will find your blog). So if you go only for local readers your blog may get 3 to 5 hits a week and over a year's time have maybe 10 regular readers-not effective marketing. the locally grown thing works only if there are several others in your area using it. There is no one around me using that software so it is useless to me unless i want to do all the marketing work getting people to use the software to buy from and than i have to deliver the goods to them, etc. Where this is established it works but it is a lot of work to set up a system in a new area. Facebook is a lot more flexible than a blog. they are two very different things-blogs allow you to tell your story in depth. FB allows you to do rapid updates that people will see as people are on FB for hours on end. But it is not easy to get real in depth and write say 500+ word updates on FB and have people read them. Facebook allows me to do actual business-I sell CSA shares over FB. I have never actually sold anything because of the blog. the blog is what gets people interested in the farm, though.