Susan and Mary, Great news on your physocarpa. After reading your post, Susan, I have got to go out and bring in the pods left on the plant before tonight. It is cool and drizzly here this morning, a really gray day. I've got some seed I need to bag up to stratify. Keep looking for variegata seeds, and there just isn't any. The last two plants are in pots in the ground, but I read that the gophers will actually come up above the ground and eat something they like. I will be putting in half inch hardware cloth under the plants and around them this winter so to make a bed to protect them. Purchased Castor Bean seeds, and have treated the soil with castor oil. This has kept the gophers out of the tuberosa so far. Mary, like you, I love the tuberosa. I especially love the "Hello Yellow". The leaves are heartier than the orange. I find eggs on the plants in the spring. It seems I am finding lots to do this season. I have collected seeds from different plants and have been trading and sharing them. It was a good season for plants to put on seeds. I also am cleaning out seed pods from the Passiflora incarnata--they are everywhere. Looking at a new portable greenhouse called a "Convertible greenhouse". It works like a car convertible, and looks like something I could handle and store. Haven't taken the step to purchase it yet. That's the news here in BA. Saw butterflies last week in Austin, but didn't get to get out and chase them. Sandy

There's nothing quite as cool-looking(temperaturewise) as BLUE flowers. I grew Phacelia a few years ago, best blue i ever saw, next to cornflowers. The bell-shaped blue flowers with icy-white anthers were beautiful, and stirred up images of cooler weather. They do have a short bloom time, hot weather just about stops the show, cutting back helps somewhat. Give 'em a try, i believe there are 2 or 3 varieties. Good luck, and enjoy.

Just thought I would expand on what Christine said earlier about people driving up the price of online auctions and additionly what Mike has said. What is done by a couple of sellers mentioned thus far is that they pay as little as $5 to buy a 4" pot wholesale (This is also done by website sellers, but they offer a fixed price) and then either immediately or after growing them on for a season, they sell them at acution on ebay. Sometimes, a seller may have some stock plants of common nursery varieties the he grafts himself, but orders in the new plants he does not have stock plants for. So when we go into an auction, the value of that auction for a first year plant is in obtaining a very low price. Additionally, some sellers will ship at very reasonable prices, but others are much too high in my opinion. So when we drive the price of these often very small plants up, we pay nearly as much as we would from someone who sells maples though a hosted website (Wildwood, Mountain Maples, Eastwood). This is where I feel it is better to turn to a web-based nursery than persist with ebay auctions. Even those that have nurseries like Jherter and Nishikimaplesman choose to sell through ebay and the reason being is that more times than not, they will average higher prices in the auctions. Some will even fudge a bit to call a plant a two year tree when it is not. If we are going to spend $30-50 then we might as well establish with an online nursery that will guarantee their plants and is ethical enough to sell through a web-based business. As much as ebay wants us to feel it is a business, it is not! It can be enjoyable to buy from ebay in the winter when not much else is happening and I buy during the growing season also. But I also frequent local nurseries in Oregon. So in anycase, whether or not we buy from ebay, it is nice to have a balance between local sellers where we can go and see the trees and buying online. It is only in going to an actual nursery that we will learn about the plants and those that care enough to propagate them. Establishing an entire collection over ebay is something that I would not enjoy as I would miss the interaction with the growers and nurserymen who also love maples. Of course there are unfortunate areas of the country where local establishments are not accessible and thereby it is understandable to have to use online sellers only. There is something said for establishing relationships and I do not believe that will be done on ebay--it is about the money to be had by auctioning trees. As Mike said in different words, it is "Buyer Beware" and now with this thread, equally as interesting, "Seller Beware!" I have had equally good and bad experiences with almost every seller mentioned here so far, but I will say that Cedric (Bonsaibob) seems to know the most about maples and had the best communication practices--problem is that his enhanced photography seems to lead to a higher frequency of auctions where the price is driven up. There is no reason to pay those kind of prices unless we feel there is no other avenue to obtain the plant and we have to have it. MJH

There is a Susan Branch package available through QVC homepage---always for sale or at least has been available for a month now. www.qvc.com and go to home section then it's either crafts or hobbies. Becky