Thank you Ellen and Esther for hosting yet another nice swap. dirtdiver, thank you so much for the kind offer. I almost grabbed the monarda you brought but since my name was not on it so I thought it might be for somebody else so I left it there. Anyway yesterday I have picked up the Monarda you brought for me from Ellen's place. Thanks Gonativegal, somehow I missed your plants. I am really sorry for that. I thought to email you but your email link was not on GW. Thank you so much for taking time and bringing it for me. I really apologize. Happygardener, Thank you so much for the lots of egg plants, celery, and for sage. Yesterday I could plant them in my raised bed. can't wait to see them grow. Motria, thank you so much for the Monarda raspberry wine Doris, nice to meet you and thank you so much for lemon balm and Monarda. Every time I see you, you look different not sure next time when I see you if I recognize. :) Linnea, thank you so much for penstemon, phlox and aster can't wait to grow them. Jasmine

Susan, Please don't worry about Russian sage. Next fall swap is there so probably I can get it from you. It was my mistake that i didn't try to look in the holding area racks instead tried to go through the easiest way and contacted people who brought plants for me and they guided me to find the plants. I already planted iberis and am very happy that i got it from you. Linnea, here is the info about Lemon grass. http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/herbs/msg04154629653.html I read so far that it likes very sunny location and moist soil. It makes good tea and it taste very good. One thing i noted that the leaves which gets more older don't give any flavour. So you need to use the leaves before start yellowing. It might grow may be 2-3 ft in our zone 5. It will not survive during winter. You might try to overwinter it. You can find more links by doing google search. I had one somebody sent me last year it grew very well and was in pot. During winter i brought it inside and it was growing fine but i thought to put it in a bigger pot and pulled it out. It was a big struggle to release it's roots from plastic pot. It was totally root bound. I don't know what went wrong but after this it died and still no sign of any growth. Not sure if it is dead permenantly. You can get lemon grass in spanish stores easily. I bought some and they rooted very easily. I have planted one in the ground. I have still to see how it does in the ground. I am not thinking to plant it in pots as it is easily available in store. I am so glad i could plant most of the plants brought from swap yesterday. Today it's raining very hard so hope it will all settle down well.

Mike, read your post as I was headed out the door and decided that I would flip a couple of rocks. Under about as many rocks, I saw a very large gravid syspila (28"), an attractive 18" sypila and a racer. This is the time of the gravid females incubating. When we were in Cali, it was interesting how many things we were told we wouldn't see or would, or more generally, how many things were "always the case" and how many of those things we proved wrong. We left thinking, don't these people know their own species behaviors better than this? (even though we did receive great help overall out there)-- Anyway, the point is that we probably do the same thing out of "the season" because instead of testing as constantly as we do in April/May, we write it off as "season ended" and our knowledge base drops back to general and assumptive.

My live snake totals were: 6 Mojave Rattlesnakes (lifer) 3 Western Diamondback Rattlesnakes 2 Northern Blacktail Rattlesnakes 1 Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake 1 Sonoran Whipsnake (lifer) 1 Sonoran Gopher Snake (lifer)