Kevin are you ok? Any one of us would have taken them and probably paid you for them. Don't take your grouchiness out on the orchids. Easy! You are scaring us! All orchids are pretty much mass produced . We know you are the resident phal hater. ;-) The rehabs ranged from Phals to paphs to intergens. Phals are not space hogs. I have really grow to like them. A 17 bulb Deppi or a yard+ of Stanhopea popping growths from every side, that's a hog and pendulant bottom blooms are tough to juggle in an indoor set up. That isn't really my main complaint, space. Like Paul says, over time you develope a taste for specific forms and don't need everything. If I am not enjoying Sharry Baby, why light it? Let someone else enjoy it. I don't think asco's are really fun to grow in z-5. Love them but that's when I lived in z-10. The service is killing me. I feel like I can't leave for a week. Only Carolyn's curvofoilium is easy for me. The bigger ones are too time demanding to keep on track. I am going to begin to get it together. I think I am going to do as Carolyn says, 2 rounds. immediate release and then a 2nd release. Some will make me sad. They have been my buddies. But it's time. Thanks for all the input. Clara

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

Wow....what an amazing list of people.... too many of them no longer with us or active here. It is nice to remember some of their names and their struggles that we shared. Thanks for the memories.