I appreciate all of the information you have given me. Barbara, thanks for the suggestions of the plants, and it looks like Caldwell Pink might be what I want. I have also made a note of the others since I need to put more plants in with my roses at home. Kate, thanks and I don't think Stella de Oro is boring at all. I do have many bulbs in the bed, but only a few come up at once. Athena, agastache looked beautiful when I put it in the browser, but I think it is the one that is in the mint family. Does it have underground runners and clumps of roots like mint does? Lens, I also thought of rugosas, but where I usually shop, Chamblees, does not seem to sell them anymore. I like their prices, especially when I am experimenting. Karl, the Church would not trust us. They try to watch their pennies, and with 6 islands, and volunteers also taking care of plots around the church, we can cost them a lot of money with water use. We keep large plastic bins in the van anyway, just in case we want to buy something that is dirty. I can fill those with a bunch of pitchers, and drive slowly from the building to the island. I just often don't take the time to do it. I am lucky to be within 2 miles of my church so it would be easy, if I would only get in the habit of doing it. They have a water source on three of the islands, then the back ones can hook up to the front ones. But many people hook up the soaker hoses, and leave. Then the parking lot is soaking wet, and people complain about the waste. I guess others feel like I do about the Knock Outs. I thought you might be suggesting some others, but Caldwell Pink is beautiful, and it would look good. I won't be calling Chamblees until Monday, so if you have other suggestions, feel free to respond. SAmmy

Every year, I ALWAYS post this reminder: There is nothing wrong with buying cheap bulbs. Just keep them away from your collection till you are sure that they are clean, pest and most specially virus free. The virus detection is the hardest. Most "pampered" hippies will not even show signs of it. Put them under stress and you will be very surprised and probably scared. Rot is always visible most of the time. Mites can hide deep inside the bulb. Virus is unseen by the naked eye. So a very healthy looking bulb with lots of fresh white roots and bulblets still has a 50-50 chance of being sick. I also bought some hippies from Walmart last season, clearance priced for $2 something. The Royal Velvets were good. The Appleblossoms were trashed...virused!!! Veronica Read strongly advices readers to "Only purchase bulbs from a reputable supplier". For me, that should be the #1 rule for bulb purchases if possible. Unfortunately, in our quest to acquire varieties that are not offered by the known bulb companies, we had to get our bulb from other sources. It is a risk that we all have to take. Taking pre-cautionary actions can save you a lot of grief besides the $$$. On a happier note...I received 2 boxfull of Hippes today. One from Park Seed and one from Wayside. Some bulbs are good, some are bad. I'd hate to say that I expected this because we as paying customers do not deserve bad bulbs. Apparently though, it has become a trend. Are we supposed to get used to receiving bad bulbs? I hope not... Now it's time to call customer service ...AGAIN! I hate complaining and doing this every year. I'm pretty sure they are expecting our calls too. Anybody received their Sonatinis from Rarebulbs yet? I am getting weary over my purchases from them. Some of the sonatinis that I have received from other comapnies are starting to put out scapes and need to be planted ASAP. I surely don't want to receive bloomed out bulbs at this time of the season. We will be seeing Lemon Sorbets and Little Devils soon...

For decades my trips to Walmart were few and far between for a number of reasons I've outlined before. About 2 months ago a new "Super" Walmart went up not too far from from me. I decided to ignore the order given by one-who-shall-remain-nameless who ordered me to stay out of "her" Walmarts and I ventured in to look around. The big advantage is that it's open 24 hrs so I can go in during the middle of the night and avoid a lot of the traffic, although you do get the restock traffic which can be as bad. At least in this area Walmart has been forced to clean up their act a lot from what I've seen and heard, especially since Target changed the smaller stores to P-fresh. They've also converted a few stores to "Super" Targets. Target has clearly made a concerted effort to take some grocery business from the competition and with the prices I've seen, they will accomplish that. So, back to the comparisons: Carts, not much difference. Walmart's of course are new at this store so they *should* be in good shape. Target's were replaced not long ago and the plastic carts are all fine and seem to hold up a lot better than I thought they would. So equal ground there. I'll say this for the new Walmart, it's still pretty clean, and quite well maintained so far so on that level, comparable to Target. Although I suspect there's some corporate big dogs in there controlling things during the break-in period at least when I've been there. Some very definite non-Minnesota accents floating around! Pricing? Well, I've noted pricing so far on about 40 items in the local "big gun" grocery store (Cub), Target and Walmart and was quite surprised. I knew Target beat Cub on a lot of things and thought it'd be interesting to see how Walmart compares. They run a lot of TV ads comparing receipts from Cub & Walmart and claiming to be so much cheaper. I note they don't compare to Target and it's clear why. About 1/2 the items I've compared so far are identical in price. There's a number of things where Walmart is a penny or two cheaper. But there were also several things where Target was 25¢ to a couple dollars or more cheaper. I'm going to say that all in all they're pretty comparable (especially depending on what you buy, how much and how often of course). FWIW, over the past few years, a couple of the local TV stations have done their own price comparison of the stores and 2 out of 3 times Target beat Walmart quite significantly. The station's claim was you'd save $400/year at Target over Walmart in their comparison. The last one had them essentially neck in neck but an ever so slight edge to Walmart. Two big differences though that I've seen. Meat and produce. Hands down better at Target in both departments. This has been a good year for grapes so I thought I'd get some while I was at Walmart last time, but after tasting one, and spitting it out, I guessed the season was over. Two days later, at Target, I bought 3 pounds of delicious grapes. I bought apples at Walmart and thought they should be good, after all they were Honey Crisp. Bought 3, threw two. I buy apples at Target year round and never had a bad one yet. I guess I should add a third difference. Clearance items at Target. (Never really see anything on clearance at Walmart.) I like checking what's on clearance. I often seem to find something of interest and for things like cleaners and personal care items, when I have a coupon, I couple it with something on clearance and it's cheap for a good quality item. I dislike paying full retail for things like toothpaste, deodorant and the like when it's on clearance so often. Couple other things I noticed: Walmart was cheaper on can coolers, but $2 higher on the same brand name underwear. Plus Target had a "value sized" larger count package available that made it cheaper yet. The first time I was in the new Walmart, people were nearly tripping over themselves asking if they could help, which was *highly* unusual for my normal Walmart, uh, shall we say, "experience". But that situation is pretty much the same as at most of the other places around here these days. (The strategy is for every employee to make contact with every customer they can, and you don't just tell them where things are at, you bring them to it for the "personalized" touch and to help cut shoplifting since people will think they're being noticed in the store.) But I've noticed that is wearing down each subsequent trip in there. Maybe the employees are getting sick of it. Could have been that they just started the job and were excited to have the job at first, IDK. Hard to say, but I'm curious to see what will happen with that. I haven't gone to other Walmarts around here for a long time so I can't say if they vary prices from store to store but they do vary at Target and I do find that a bit annoying. They're all within a few miles of each other but the prices can vary. So will I be a Walmart regular? (Whether or not I'm "ordered" to stay out! LOL) I guess I might pick up a few staples during the middle of the night if I'm up. Not too sure I want to go there during the day. Target can be busy but still not the issues that I've encountered before in the W place. Have to wait and see I guess.

Well, I hope that someone found it, bought it and took it home with them where it hopefully is someplace warm and frost-free/freeze-free. My big tomato plant is happily residing upstairs in the spare room right beside a south-facing window. I talk to it, thump its blossoms and check its soil moisture daily. A couple of lady bugs that were attempting to overwinter by hibernating in a corner of the spare room woke up in Tuesday's hot weather and now are climbing all over the plants in the room. They must think it is Spring. I do hope the folks at Home Depot in Gainesville brought in all those plants from the garden center or covered them up with a very heavy-duty frost blanket row cover because they had hundreds and hundreds of plants in stock over the weekend. If they had moved the plants, shelving racks and all, someplace indoors it would have filled up an entire 2-car garage with little room to spare, so it was a substantial number of plants. . And, those are just the vegetables, fruits (strawberry plants) and herbs. I'm not as worried about the shrubs and perennials they had on display. On Tuesday it hit 79 degrees at our Mesonet station and 77 degrees at our house, and it didn't just feel warm, it almost felt hot. That sort of weather could give a person planting fever. The bees and the wasps were swarming all day. This morning, though, reality returned and it was 26 degrees at our house and 23 degrees at our Mesonet station this morning around sunrise. Gainesville is at a higher elevation so they might have been slightly warmer, but probably not by much. Our weather is nuts. We've had more than the usual number of grass fires the last couple of days, which is par for the course as winter deepens and fine fuels like grasses become more cured following freezing weather. I'm surprised how many plants have popped up in stores across the state this past week. Even some cool-season plants can freeze or suffer damage with temperatures in the lower 20s, especially if they just came out of a climate-controlled greenhouse before they were shipped to the stores. I just don't understand why so many stores so far north have so many plants. Of course, the stores are happy to sell the plants. And, for the folks who buy those plants and put them into the ground too early, the stores then will happily sell them replacement plants. It is a great business model for the stores---the more plants they sell early which then freeze, the more plants they sell later to replace the frozen ones.