Nolin Nursery "sometimes" has Chetopa available, and there is a reference to dwarf hickories in a 2005 Dave's Garden thread that won't open for me even when I sign in, mentioning Chetopa and Casey as dwarfs, but I can't find Casey hickory on any other search. England's Nursery no longer carries hickories, it looks like. Without Casey I'd have to go with a full-size pollinator. Not that I live near wild hickories, but does the pollen parent affect the taste of the nut? If I ever make the move out to the country, I'll plant shagbark hickories and blight-resistant chestnuts for my grandchildren. In the meanwhile, maybe the blight-resistant, hopefully immune filberts. Maybe Rutgers wants backyard gardeners to do some test plantings.

I guess it all depends on where you live and what your soil temps are at what time of the year. Next year Esther Opal can come here and watch M. Aureomarginata come up through several inches of Japanese maple leaves. The mound it creates as the leaves rise higher and higher until finally she emerges with leaves ready to unfurl. She is also planted in the only area of my garden that gets zero sun. Several inches of leaves and zero sun, I can't keep her in the ground without sitting a cement block on her. I'm with you Phil - I know what I know and have observed in MY garden, not someone else's garden located somewhere distant from me. Bless M. On Stage and Mountain Snow. They will be the only hosta that look decent this year because they don't come up until May 10, my frost date.

There are good agents and bad ones. The system down here is like an e-bay acution. The advert reads offers above $X. I'm used to a system where the vendor states their price, and the vendee (?) offers under that price and they compromise somewhere in between. Well the last 3 realestate purchases we have made, have worked on the old system - we have been happy, the sellers have been happy, the agents have been nice. All the agents that work on the dutch auction system seem to be "ar53h0135" if you don't mind be saying so. Daughter has had similar experiences. we nearly bought a house as a rental investment. I made an offer, the agent said they had a higher bid, I said tough. The agent pestered me for a week. Then he told me 2 weeks later that the previous offer had fallen through, so we were back in the running. I told him I had lost interest. He told me I knew nothing about buying investment properties. I swore at him and hung the phone up loudly in his ear. end of story. How does the dutch auction system work? Well - you put in a bid. They tell you they have a higher bid, and pester you to raise your bid, but they don't tell you how much has been offered, or by whom. etc, etc. FGS they might not even have another person bidding, like in the case I described above. It sucks big time. Another thing I have learnt about buying real estate ..... get a survey done before you buy. Make sure the land fits the description exactly. 3 times it hasn't for us. twice it has worked out in our favour, and not been disastrous. The last time we pulled out of the contract because of the survey. Lucky for the vendors, or we would now own not only the land they were selling, but 1/2 their house that they weren't selling. It had been built across the boundary of 2 blocks. The agent doesn't really tell you any of that. Our solicitor told us to check it. A conveyencing officer will do the conveyencing cheaper than a solicitor, but they might not tell you to check the boundaries, and it is the responsibility of the purchaser to do that.

A little late to the party but I’m in the DFW area and have had success with DA bare root roses! I have two in pots (Princess Alexandra is Kent and Lady of Shalott) and two Cinco de Mayos in the ground. The reason I out PAoK and LoS in pots is because I want to take them when we move soon. The Cinco de Mayos are floribundas and are really a good replacement to the typical knock outs that are everywhere here. The grow like crazy, bloom constantly, and loooooOoOove the sun and heat. I have them against the outside brick wall at the S/SW corner of my house and they are THRIVING. I don’t baby them at all. Theyre mixed in with lantanas, oleander, and rosemary and I treat them the same. They also get big quickly. I planted them last year and they grew over 3’ tall and wide in one season. Despite being so tough the blooms really are beautiful. They start a bright neon red and fade to lavender. The other two get a little more babying. In our current weather I water the same as all the other plants and feed DA rose food. However, once it’s 95+ I drown them at least once a day. And I mean drown! I take the hose and flood the pot to the top with water, drain, and do it again. They love it! I noticed that if I don’t water like that the blooms are either small and puny or nonexistent. I guess the plant really needs the water to create the petals. Hope this helps!