I'm glad you posted in this forum. Don't delete it because I'm sure many others besides myself will enjoy following your progress. You can post in the Heirloom forum, too.

Your black cat looks JUST like my B.C. (Bad Cat). And your Mr. Muscle Cat looks an awful lot like my sister's 22 pound behemoth cat Indy. I really love my cats! We're working on Noah's ark: father, mother, two kids, two cats, two parakeets, two goldfish. . . . Oh, yeah, and Speedie the snail, in with the fish. Gotta love having pets (especially now that the kids are old enough to start helping to do the dirty work taking care of them). Now the kids want a dog - perhaps next year, when we're feeling brave and/or slightly insane. Laurel

Tony, sorry to hear about your calotropis seeds. There are lots of calotropis plants where my daughter lives, I've thought about having her send me some seed. If I can give her directions to the really nice purple shrub growing in the neighborhood across the street from their area, maybe she'd find a seedpod that I could share. I grew a lot one year, and the caterpillars loved the leaves. I 'll put in a request for a seedpod. . . or two. Lila, will you stay in Texas? Hope your gopher spurge works, I may try to find some of that. Will you get more land? Do you already have a place picked out to move? Yes, lots of questions! If you get to your new place in time, I'll send some more Aristolochia clematitis roots to see if you can get it started. It has taken over the garden. I ordered 3 Asclepias lanceolata plants from a NC nursery, so will be trying these. The flowers are a beautiful deep orangey red color. They arrived dormant, but the crowns look healthy. This is the way Seneca Hills used to send her plants. Sure do miss her! I'll try the physocarpus again. Hopefully, I'll have a greenhouse by next winter. It's on my want list, now that I have a place for one. We got lots of good moisture this past week, so should see some sprouting taking place in a couple of weeks. I do not have any luck with milkweed seeds ordered from Georgiavines. Anyone else have this problem? I much prefer Prairie Moon or Butterfly Encounters. So, I just need to quit ordering seed for GV, as it's not going to get any better. I also ordered Purple MW seeds from Everwilde, and only got 7 seeds in one packet. It seems they used to give you more. I did, however, get a bunch of A syriaca seeds from them. Purpurascens seeds seem scarce this year. Hope I get some seed pods this summer. Even though the gophers love this plant, they don't seem to get all the roots, and new plants pop up in different places. Sandy

I cut hansa rose back this year.. it was blooming at the top of seven feet canes, fine for me, but no so great for my wife. She loves the smell of this rose, plus behind it I planted John Davis, the were both the same hieght and it looked odd. Normally do not cut rogusas back, but honestly, it looks soooooooooooooo much better now. the foilage has filled in and you cant tell I hacked it in half, its around 4.5 feet now and the increased light has prompted John Davis to grow up even further. Silverkelt