No, don't be jealous... I hear Chicago is wonderful - Actually I was there several years ago - We moved from a suburb in NY and I miss going to NYC and all of the broadway shows, museums and excitement. Is anyone ever totally happy where they are? But, I am much happier here now that there has been so many people from all over coming to NC - and the shopping? Unbelievable... Charlotte has been known to be the "testing place" for new restaurants - and while we are not much are going out to eat all the time... It's fun to try new places once in a while. The best part of moving here, I have to admit, is a bit less snow - although we can get snow. I just don't like driving in it and always felt stranded in New York. Carrie

ihave need for 2 or 3 chinaberry seedlings or seed. also pawpaw & persimmon seed. please advise.

The best experience I have had with living mulch is simply our lettuce patch this year, which we seeded heavily to grow as a baby mesclun mix. But we didn't harvest much at the baby stage and it all grew well beyond us. (We grew 4'x4' worth.) Soon they became more like adolescent lettuce than babies. You couldn't see the soil for the life of you. And boy oh boy did that lettuce produce. No matter how much we harvested, it seemed, it stayed way ahead of us. And the living mulch aspect really showed true when the recent heat wave came through--temps right up at about 100'F for several days in a row. Not the kind of weather you expect lettuce to take very well, but ours didn't mind it a bit. Even through that, the stuff didn't bolt. My best guess is the living mulch effect--the heavy shade the lettuce created for itself kept the soil moist and cool, so it didn't get the urge to bolt.

All "weeds" are plants, wild flowers. Whether what you have is a plant you do not want growing where you do not want it growing, which makes it a "weed", can only be determined by you. Apparently most of what we term "weeds" are wild flowers that are an essential part of the diet of many of our pollinators.