I have Northern Hi-lights, and would recommend it. It has a lovely scent and as rhodyman's photo shows, it has beautiful flowers. It also has reddish fall color, and one of mine has recovered nicely from my husband mowing over it with the brushhog! Overall a great cold weather deciduous rhody. One problem for you with the one in Germany is that it might or might not be hardy for you.

Carrie I agree it is not the same quality it used to be. Some of the bags are not as full, no little fruity bits more millet, etc etc Still, it is soooo convenient in those individual bags and the less likely to mold for me. Sam's has a great website. You type in your zipcode and it gives you all the stores in you area. The product code # is 674208. I literally looked all around the area and found it in stock in Grapevine and Addison. Maybe other Dallas area stores too. I just got back from Grapevine and they still had some in stock. This morning I called and was told they had 58 boxes. I loaded up and it's Saturday so hurry! Scott's customer service was not interested at all. You can give your opinion of the product on the Sam's site and others have also noted the decline in quality. Still....it did also go down in price a little, but I wonder if Sam's and Scotts are trying to make it better. (shhh, don't tell anyone, I keep a bag of seed in my car and literally feed the birds in parking lots. I think they know my car in a few places....don't tell the people...)

Liz, had to reread your post. I couldn't remember mentioning how expensive the trip was, and then I realized you wrote "exTensive". :-) Regardless, it was both all encompassing and all depleting and we probably won't be doing any more big travel for a while. Ahhh, thanks Flamey. I missed you and Gravey too. Maybe I'll go domestic next year and visit AR. Even though you're way out in the boondocks, it's got to be easier to get to than SE Asia. But to give it an international flair, I'll bring Margarita mix. :-) I've spent, at this point, about a zillion hours going through my photos and have only covered our four days in Hong Kong. Give me strength, I still have 17 more days of photos to go through. Jodi-

Yes, a few more that I couldn't post earlier today below. Yep, 'Bird Park' seems to be difficult to graft, I would say those account for most of my losses. I did many 'Bird Park' grafts and only had 1 success. However, I chopped the understock off before reading that Spruce need the understock, so I will likely lose it... I just don't trust myself to care for fresh grafts in pots... I would much rather allow mother nature to care for them. I'm not particularly organized, and would likely forget to water or fertilize them. That area is pretty shaded if the trees will ever leaf out, but in the meantime I have a 60% shade cloth canopy overhead. Interestingly, the one surviving graft of Picea x mariorika 'Glauca' has no buds! I didn't notice when I grafted the piece that the buds were missing. It seems healthy though. I'm keeping the rootstock on that one and hoping it will be able to generate new buds next year... I've seen it happen before! Picea x mariorika 'Glauca' Picea abies 'Reflexa' Picea pungens 'Glauca Globosa' Picea abies 'Green Globe' (Triple Graft) - Bad picture, raining today original broom of 'Green Globe' Updated Yellow strobus, already turned to green for the spring/summer: Original Photo of 'Bird Park' broom: