I got this idea from some violet pots that had a wick that extended down into a water bath below the bottom of the pot. The wicks that I bought from the violet store were very expensive, but when I examined them I was pretty sure they were just diced up shoelaces. Before starting seeds, put a 3" piece of shoestring through the bottom hole of your seedling pot. Place the seedling pots on a metal wire cooling rack. Set the rack on top of a large cake pan and set the whole thing in a sunny window. Then put about 1' of water in the cake pan. The wick pulls the water into the seedling pots. Now you're gonna want to cover the whole kit n'kaboodle with some seran wrap and mist lightly every day until sprouts appear. Then you can take off the plastic and the wicks will do the rest. You are still going to have to put water in the large pan underneath them, but maybe only once a week. Cheryl

If you want to wait, I usually have leftovers , that my wife screams at me to do something with , instead of sitting in the fridge. I will send them over to you for free. If you want to buy some, there are several sellers on the lilyauction that will start thier crosses at .99 cents apiece. I would avoice the newest names, even if some start thier crosses low (like ruby for instance, his will start at like 2.99, but they go up to 20+ dollars a cross most of the time) The other place you can get cheap daylily seeds is via Ts Flowers and Things (do a google search, I know they have some, I never bought any from them, but Ive bought other stuff.) Do not hesitate to drop me a email, I will save it and get back to you when I have the extras (I usually start wintersowing about the same time I start my crosses inside, Jan-Feb timeframe) Silverkelt

Goodness! Was so busy with the move, I missed part of the Pogrom! Anyhoo...we were in Mississippi for a board meeting, and got a look at our old garden, which is looking GREAT. Thought I'd do an update. As I'd stated, we were worried that we'd lose a ton, selling in this market, and with the ongoing noise problem just outside our neighborhood. But the garden gave the house immense 'curb appeal', our Decorator had the interiors whipped into a seductive frenzy, and our Mayor...well...has worked for two decades, to give the town enough cachet to keep property values high, even in this Depression. Too, Kismet smiled upon us, in the form of two young surgeons, who had lived in problem neighborhoods, before. Living in slums until they'd completed residency, they had been assaulted with noise from neighbors' sound systems, too. In order to get much-needed sleep, they had developed an acoustic isolation chamber disguised as a curtained bed. Amazingly similar to what our Decorator had done for our windows, but isolated on all sides, the structure sits on several inches of special foam. So there's no chance of infrasonic vibrations making their way up from the ground. GENIUS! Those whose accounting is more optimistic than mine would say we made a couple hundred grand. I'd say we just broke even, once the move was factored-in. Anyway, we got the (rather high) asking price. Our friends who had moved out here ahead of us found a distressed estate home for us, up the mountain from them. Too artsy-craftsy-early-nineties-lodge-look for me. But our decorator is bringing the house into the new Millennium with only a few tweaks, here and there. Anyway, we got a genuine estate, in one of the most desired neighborhoods in the Northwest, for only a bit more than we'd gotten for our spec-grade McMansion in Madison. Our friends out here also bought an "architecturally-important estate home" at a distressed price, and (once the decorator we share had worked his magic) have been getting offers that would advance their position by over a million. Hope that happens here. Nice as this is, I have my heart set on something smaller and more formal...French cut Limestone, with brick herringbone floors, to be specific. Back in Madison, the Clumping Bamboo we added is thriving, and the young surgeons have found an improved cultivar of variegated Arundo (Peppermint Stick) at Madison Lawn & Garden, to plug up the accoustic 'holes'. This is their first real home, and they are turning into gardening fiends! Wonderful! The CVS urns lynch-mob travesty got us thinking about giant urns for the ends of the pool. So our decorator had Hayles & Howe cast a couple of eight-footers from the parapet of a house in England. They arrived a month back, and we got to see them, newly-installed. Brought tears to my eyes....tears of joy, to see my garden looking so lovely. If the new owners allow the house to be photographed, maybe you'll see it in a magazine. I doubt it, though. Aside from the plantings and the decorating, it's still just a spec house. Based on what I planted that's looking great, here's a list of triumphs: Muskogee Crape Myrtle Peach Drift Rose (quite shade tolerant) Cherokee Rose Lady Banks Rose (all four forms...single white, double white, single yellow, double yellow...as well as the hybrid 'Fortunaiana') Dr. W. VanFleet Rose (the more vigorous parent of New Dawn) Southern Wood Fern Crocosmia Hymenocallis 'Sparkling Burgundy' Camellia Sasanqua Oops!...just opened the gates for my Trainer. Gotta go... Thanks, everybody, for those notes of encouragement!

I vaguely remember reading that the dull grey look of the bus bars in most panels is caused by cadmium plating, not tin. I might be wrong about that, though; my memory is a little funny these days. Some of the stuff they sell in the big box stores is loss leader merchandise. They'll buy up a huge lot of some fairly popular item in the hopes that you'll spend lots on the higher-margin products that go with it. I find that buying most of my supplies at a medium-size local electrical jobber gets me about the same overall cost, and their stock of less common parts is MUCH better. It's great that agent orange and big blue are open on weekends, but when I have to chase around to 2 or 3 of the big box stores to find what I need, I realize that my time would have been much better spent to have gone a little out of my way on Friday, driving to the jobber instead.