Thanks to all of you who commented on my seedling. It has improved a lot since last season when it first bloomed. The flower size is larger and with better color, and it has a few more buds. After it finishes blooming I want to move it where it can get more sun. It's overshadowed by larger, taller seedlings where it is now. Kay and Cindy - Cosmic Odyssey has a lovely bloom, but the plant seems very tender and does not do well after cold winters here. It has only bloomed twice in four years and the fans have not increased. Avedon, Dipsandtets, Sann, Brittie, Christine, Msjam2, and Anniegolden - Winter Treasure is just loaded with branches and buds this time. Plus, I noticed two instant rebloom scapes coming this evening. Ellie, Rita and Kay - Patricia Snider Memorial continues to bloom well. And I noticed more scapes coming today. I'm sure if these are just later scapes from the inside of the clump or rebloom scapes. In any case, I look forward to a few more weeks of photographing PSM. Jean - Coronal Light was my favorite one from these too. It's quintessential Stamile. The blooms are wonderful, but they sit atop overy short scapes this time. I guess that's do to the dry conditions we had in April. Debra

Maryl - I've only had two blooms on Lake Tahoe Autumn so far. I love the bloom, but I have no idea about plant habits here yet. The first day it bloomed the weather was cool. Today it was a humid 91 degrees, and the color held pretty well. It did fade a bit, but the bloom, which has thick substance, was still colorful and pretty at 7 p.m. I think it will do even better keeping it's color when it's out of a pot and in the ground. I will say the bloom held up better than the other new Trimmer late I got this spring, Wild Apple Autumn. Debra

TRAHLYTA always has a place here in my garden. Increases fast, lots of blooms. ngraham: I'm wondering why it doesn't do well for you? I divided mine this spring. I was getting concerned that dividing it may have lost a bloom season for me. Nope. It has scapes on both plantings that I can finally see so it did bounce back. I have both plantings in full sun. Great pics Karen. Julia

IdaClaire, such interesting photos. I'm glad to hear you're preserving them. I've scanned a lot of photos, some very old, negatives, slides and tin types. Plus all of our family photos taken over the years. Boxes and boxes, most not yet scanned. I had to ser that project aside for a while, but found it very rewarding. I just had a simple HP flatbed scanner and Photoshop. For people doing a lot of scans, there is equipment that will do batches and much faster. with Photoshop, I could crop, adjust the hue, contrast, saturation and remove or fix some of the artifacts (like your dots). Mold can create "foxing" and many album materials like plastic can leave marks, encourage mold, cause the photos to adhere to the plastic. Cellophane tape leaves brown marks. Inks can flow and transfer to other photos and leak to the image. Nowadays there are special archival quality materials that are kind, but in years past, these were not likely to be (readily) available. You might want to look into a preservationist as well as a scanning service, especially for any photos that are rare. The third photo down looks like a "Rough Rider". My grandfather was a Rough Rider, joining when he was 16 yo (fibbed to join). I have a bunch of photo from that era -- some showing all the tents where they trained (Florida). The men wore various types of "uniforms" -- apparently cobbled together from former campaigns. The uniform on the last chap does look like it belongs in a marching band; or possibly a conductor or circus performer. You might want to run that past an historian, or theatre production person. Someone at your towns historical society might be a good resource. When I was scanning a lot of old black and white family prints from those little booklets the photo shop used to put the 120 prints in, I got a huge kick out of enlarging them on my display screen. A regular wool skirt came alive with memories when I zoomed on it. I could see the flecks of colored wool dots amid the charcoal and found that I could remember that skirt of my mothers in detail and with that came a flood of memories and associations I was not informed of by just viewing the 3x3 inch gray toned glossy print. Now I want to post some of my photos and ask questions! So interesting.