Not the best photos of some of these to do them justice, but anyway gives you an idea of some of the hardier ones that do well in landscapes here in the SF Bay Area, a zone 9b situation. The ones in these photos include Dyckia 'Cactus Ranch Red' from San Marcos Growers, D. 'Morris Hobbs' from Suncrest Nursery, D. platyphylla and a couple of others. D. platyphylla is probably the most cold tender, but the others would probably all work just fine in zone 8b settings. Here is a link that might be useful: Set of Dyckia's in the garden

Hi All, I know I've been MIA for a few weeks. Work has been taking over lately. I just posted my trade list on the FTW Garden swap site. I added my pre-trades as I culled them from this page. Please review to see if I'm still on track. I'm going to try to accommodate everyone's rain lily requests. If I don't have enough of the yellow rain lily seeds to go around, I may be able to entice you with some minima seeds. Minimas are the most adorable tiny pale pink rain lilies. The flowers are less than a half inch in diameter. As a bonus, they go from seed to blooming in one year! I have about a dozen minima seed pods in my pots right now. I'll try to harvest some before the swap. Looking forward to meeting you all, JK

For those purposes, or any purpose I can think of offhand, low odor is fine to use. I will say that not all mineral spirits are created equal though, so if they have two different brands get the more expensive stuff. Do you know what kind of wood you're stripping? Maple for example doesn't like oil based stains generally.

A dog for sure!! we were raised by several dogs. But our french poodle Bridgett comes to mind. She was the first dog that us kids grew up with. She was a small poodle, and our mother spoiled her terribly. Wow! I never would have thought. Yep, for sure that is Bridgett. She would be hanging with mom and dad for sure. Trin