Thank you so much, Hoovb. I am truly grateful. Does your EDI fades to pink? What else, on your opinion, would look good between HC and Strike it Rich? Also, the flower bed gets all day hot-hot sun. I thought about Chihuly but I already have it planted in the opposite flower bed. It is really important about the mildew and rust resistance. After years of trying...a week ago I had to get rid of Gypsy and another rose that were truly complementing my Julia C. So now she is looking for new friends too. I spent days on Internet trying to decideðÂÂÂ. Please help! Overall, what would be of your rust and mildew-free roses? I am 5 miles from the ocean. Thanks

Kwanso is an old double orange ditch lily. The deer seldom eat mine (while they eat everything else) and it blooms for quite a while after the typical orange single ditch daylily so I appreciate it for that but it is a beast and will crowd out most other plants. By the way both are pretty much sterile so they are not seeding. I find Kwanso is very aggressive and has spread into my beds. Mine started with less than a pinky tip of roots as an experiment. What I actually wanted was another orange double, Floro Pleno. Kwanso focuses on growing a nice plant before it blooms...it thus can "hide" for years. Its leaves are big and healthy. In poor conditions it just is a sea of green until it is happy. Its looks a bit beat and barely flowers then. I have found it spreading underground...its shoot's leaves actually green in the dirt without the sun. I suggest tracking your flowers as they bloom and dig out what you know you want and relocating it. If you only have that spot I suggest saving what you know you want and keeping them in definite clumps, aggressive pulling out anything that comes up in the middle between. If an orange pops up in a clump dig the clump and carefully tease out the orange plant while in bloom....it will only infiltrate worse later. I you are careful and water you will probably still get the rest of the plant to bloom. I think if you have it you may never get rid of it entirely. Finally, if you have a plant that is mostly smaller leaved but one piece of it is looks really healthy and grows better than the rest in the spring...it could be a seedling...but probably is Kwanso. Great plant but give it it's own piece of ground and never mix it in with other daylilies.

When I stripped our old cabinetry, I used stripper, a good putty knife (for scraping up gobs of remover and finish on large flat surfaces) and then a lot of fine steel wool and mineral spirits to get in grooves and edges. Finished off with a random orbit sander and a few of those sanding sponges. My woodworking DH would cringe if he knew I was mentioning this--- mentioning, not suggesting, mind you ;^) , but I inadvertently stripped the oil based poly from our kitchen table over a period of time. This happened because I would use a homemade ammonia and rubbing alcohol cleaner on the tile kitchen counters and then swing by the table (with the damp rag) on the way to the laundry room, and wipe the top off. In not really all that much time, the ammonia/alcohol/mostly water mixture took the poly clean off down to the stain. I don't know that I would suggest this as an option, but if you are thinking of stripping and sanding at this point, it might not hurt to play with an inconspicuous spot and see what it does.

OK, back to orange amaryllis. This is a species amaryllis ( Hippeastrum puniceum) that a friend grew in Hawaii years ago. Mater of fact I gave them to her in '73 to plant at her house. I helped her plant them because I was moving away and wanted someone special to have them. Later She moved and her house became a botanical garden/nursery tourist trap. I went there years later , maybe in 2003 with my sister and the Philippino workers were weeding out the bulbs . They said they were weeds , so I said hand them over.....LOL. They remembered Paulani too. We were sitting under some ginger plants passing the time of day . It made my day. I have had problems growing them out here . They have not bloomed in YEARS. I fertilized them and tossed compost on them twice last year and they did respond. I love the curves on these flowers.The color has some sherbet to it.