Mike, First I want to say, the plants I received, beginning Jan 1, 2010, were in 3-4" containers, bulbs and cuttings. Only a handful were larger, meaning 8" to 1' tall. Total: 58. :) :( Marguest, your Banana Tree is beautiful. The colors amazing. There's even a pup. Did you find it on Ebay? Mike, to answer a few questions. I MUST stay away from Ebay..It's one addicting site. Not only do they have great deals on plants, but plant supplies. There's also a few online nurseries I browse every other wk or so. The internet makes it too easy to shop for such an exciting hobby. A few clicked keys, next thing, a package is at your front door? One word of Warning for those who really want to stop buying plants.. Well, an attempt. Do NOT sign up for nursery News Letters. It's convenient, swaying us to their site, displaying their wares. Hear the clicking keys to Paypal? lol. As for local nurseries, fortunately, there are two that sell very very nice and rare specimens..luckily, opposite directions, both a long distance drive. An hour on non-congested days, 1.5-2 hours during 9-5, Rush Hour traffic. Although, traffic has gotten so heavy the past five years, the only time to go anywhere with time to spare is between midnight and 5am. Problem is, the stores are closed. lol. Our grocery store, Jewel's, always has plants for sale. Mostly, basic plants like Spaths, certain Dracaenas, etc. My problem arises when they have dollar sales. 3-4" potted plants for 1.00. Every so often, they'll have a rarer specimen. Buy 3, pot them up, and you have a lovely plant for 3.00. Four years ago, they had, mixed in with other dollar plants, Schefflera 'brassaia/actinophylla, a plant I hadn't seen in years...last one) I grabbed it up fast. lol. That's about it. Not too bad for 9 months. lol. Toni

Whoa dude you're title kinda threw me off. I, like you, am looking for the same thing. Peppers with sweet heat. I grew up eating Aji Dulce aka Cachucha. It is a great seasoning pepper for stews and sauces and great for infusing wine vinegar. I highly recommend them for their smoky sweetness. They may look like Habaneros but are hardly hot except a little around the seeds and ribs sometimes. Having said that I want to grow bigger sweet heat with thick walls. I am looking at Poblanos and the mildly hot paprika style peppers. Possible ones you could google are ALMA PAPRIKA PEPPERS, FEHER OZON PEPPERS,BLACK HUNGARIAN PEPPERS. These are just my thoughts. Maybe someone who actually has grown these can chime in.

WOW-Love the Simsalabim!!!! I looked it up on Helpme find/roses and it cannot be found here in the states. It is available in Germany. As stated above it is a Kordes. I have been coming to the rose forum since 1998 and I have never had the chance to meet Cliff, but I sure would love to get on that list. I have not been around the rose message board since the heat started here in Arizona which was late, late May. I don't do much with my roses in the summer but water, water, it is way to hot here in Arizona right now ( today 118F) the heat will be around until the end of October YUCK. So I have not been here since early spring. I wanted to check in and see all the roses from you rose growers in the cool country and drool over your roses. Mine look terrible the heat makes them proliferate and they are gone within one day, but the roses survive and come back in the fall. Gosh how I hate the summers here and prey for fall. Anyway Kathy if you can find out for me if Cliff is taking anymore names on his list I would appreciate it. You guys have a one of a kind rose there, it is so beautiful. Thanks for sharing, Carrie

The house we'll build next year will be our last house. I did look to buy instead of build but we really just want what we want--and don't want to compromise as much as we'd have to if we buy and remodel. Completely agree ... we also looked for something existing that we might update a bit, but found that the non-negotiable items on our list just couldn't be found in an existing home. So glad we built. We've been in the house for almost 3 months now and we're really happy with how it turned out and how it works for us. There are always some bumps in the road, but knowing our budget and what our priorities were (plus a really good contractor) helped to make this build a fairly smooth process. Hope things go well for you. It seems the consensus here is previous experience does make a big difference.