Oh my Janet, you do need a bit of sunshine from us living in the South. LOL However we had a freak snow storm this week too. All my daylilies are up and growing right along with my hostas, irises, daffodils and fruit trees in full bloom. Right now it appears that the hostas and cannas were the only things the freezing weather effected. Only time will tell. I can't even begin to imagine not having some blooms and green growth sticking up everywhere. I am now awaiting my dogwood trees to start blooming. Everything seems to be right on time as far as growing, blooming, and ahhh let's not forget...them getting pinched by another cold blast from old man winter. One day soon he'll be gone and we'll all be thrilled to work in the fields, beds, and gardens for extended periods of time. Come on Spring! I know your getting real close. Old Man Winter blow yourself out of here. We are all ready for Blossoms and lots of greenery. Happy Gardening Marian P.S. At least we could tell from your photos with the labels where your plants are suppose to be...LOL Beautiful days filled with lots of sunshine are somewhere in the near future for all of us. Hang in there a little longer.

Ken, I don't understand your point of view. You are neither a hosta grower, a southern client or a small business owner. Yet, you decide that you don't want to hear gripes from the southern clients of northern growers. I'm a southern client and a small business owner. As I remember the post, the other poster was griping because the grower wasn't responding to her emails. Her plants had not arrived and other people's had. That's a red flag right there. As a small business owner, you have to respond to complaints, immediately if not sooner. You have to say something, if only to say, my wife is in surgery, I can't handle this right now. In both cases, the grower was in err. I know that you had a late spring. We accept that. What is not acceptable is not responding. That was the other growers problem. In my case, the previous year, the grower said they shipped to the warmer areas first, and did. This policy changed last spring, as shipments to northern areas were complete when mine had not shipped. My plants arrived about June 1. This has nothing to do with frozen ground. This is a vendor not returning emails. This is a vendor who chose to ship to northern areas first. This has nothing to do with geography or weather. This are bad businesss choices. I don't want an apology. I want you to understand that you are giving both businesses a pass. They don't deserve it. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Small business thrives on groups like this. It's very difficult to reach an appropriate audience. Those who are mentioned here get some nice referrals. On the flip side, if they screw up, they deserve to be called on it. That's all we did. bkay

Was in Guymon last evening and my pu just turned in at Wally World as I was leaving. So being I was in the parking lot went in to see what they had put out over the last week. Almost everything was out inside the store now. Just a few bulbs though and didn't see any seed potatoes. They had a lot of boxes stored just outside the doors in the outside area. I didn't go out to see what was there. This year they have a large Ferry-Morse seed display and a fair sized display with organic seeds from Seeds of Change. The FM seeds were very reasonable. Not sure if someone put the wrong price on the SoC seeds or not. They showed $5.49 a pack. Which I consider very high. Didn't buy anything but looked through both racks. They had all of the usual potting and seed starting mixes and supplies out. Last week they had a sale on plastic containers which I bought a few of and using as flats for onions, leeks, ect and wanted to buy a few more buty they were all gone and the area full of garden/lawn/Bar-B-Q items. Just 2 years ago I couldn't find any seed starting mix or potting mix anywhere before Feb 1st. So since I've kept at least a partial bag and some potting soil for insurance and both years the stores have had it out in mid Jan. More geese have moved in from the south over the last week. Notice a few more flocks moving north during the week. Everyone that is talking about it says it is due to little water and food south of here. They say the ducks/geese that use this fly way can go clear to the Mexico border and not find many water/food combinations. So not sure if them moving north is a good indicator of an early spring or just an indicator of hungry birds. I would say the numbers here have climbed to over a thousand now. The wheat is growing and some fields that they didn't even cut must have a little grain down on the ground as I've been watching them feed in them. They don't stay out feeding over an hour which indicates they are getting plenty to eat without a lot of work. Which somewhat surprises me. My two youngest apple trees just lost the last of their leaves a week ago and are showing signs of the buds growing now. The older one has buds I'm afraid won't wait long enough to bloom out from the way they look. I remember in the late 80's a winter like this. The last day of Jan it started raining. And then turned to ice and snow. Then the cold set in for around 2 weeks. Hope that isn't the case this winter. I keep telling everyone not to store their coats away yet. The good thing is the longer we go without a severe cold spell the less likely we are to have a prolonged extreme cold spell. But I've seen really cold weather through the 15th of Feb so not getting in too big of hurry starting too many seeds yet. Jay

feel like sharing some seeds for postage? :) I have a huge fence I need to cover... Ri