My serpentaria has really taken off this year. I noticed that the plant blooms are at the ground level and the little seed pods set on the ground. Something seems to come along and bite into the seed pods releasing them. I have hundreds of little plants around the big ones. I do have tomentosa and macrophylla growing in the same area. The tomentosa is starting to sucker and put up new vines. One new vine has been stripped. I purchased a bunch of roots from Loess last fall and potted them to sell at the Farmer's Mkt this spring. They didn't like being potted, so I put them in the ground. I will soon have quite a colony of Serpentaria and be able to dig my own roots! I thought I might have lost my investment, but it seems to be working, just not the way I planned it. LOL I also have clematitis which is spreading and has become a large colony as well. I grew lots of fimbriata from seeds and have made dish pots with this vine to sell at mkt. Fimbriata is the easiest to grow from seeds. Tomentosa sprouted fairly easily, and Clematitis takes about 6-9 months to sprout. Now for the ultimate blow, no one knows what all of this is, so the demand is nil. But, I'll keep on putting it out there and sharing about all the different plants. Farmer's Mkts don't make you rich! But you get to meet lots of wonderful people and share your passion. I try to have caterpillars with me each week, and I give chrysalides and milkweed plants to the kids. I feel like the Johnny Appleseed of Butterfly Gardening! Sandy

I've never tried that with the "ornamental" purslane, Melissa, so I'm not sure. Hopefully somebody else here can answer that for you. It would be very pretty, though. Kat, thanks for that piccie! I'm guessing the white one is similar, then? I MUST have them!! I'm going to call Lukas and see if they have the other two. I didn't even look the other day. Just saw Cinderella and flipped! Those brilliant colors just caught my eye, and I knew it had to come home with me. Thanks so much for the info! Yr. Hon. (and now Powerful) Coleus Queen, Marcia

hi caroline! i just saw your note on my blog. i didn't respond earlier because ours chairs are very different and when i first saw this posting, i was still nervous with my chair guts all over the floor. :) your chairs are beautiful, and i know nothing! i've done one upholstery job in my life, so please take that into account! the right way to do it would be to add that jute webbing stuff and sadly I know nothing about that type of upholstery work! since you said it's comfy with a blanket rolled up, here's what i'm thinking... our springs do look very similar, but my chair has sides that cover up all the craziness inside. on top of my springs i have a thick layer of dacron batting stapled to the lower part of the frame around the outside. then on top of that it's just thin drapery lining fabric - (it was closest to the fabric cutting counter and i was in a huge hurry!) i stitched that drapery lining fabric (solid white) to the patterned fabric that gets stapled to the footboard on the front. then i pulled the drapery lining under the arms and stapled to the sides of the frame. that all gets covered up by the fabric on the arms. and i have a box cushion on top of all that. so the construction of my upholstery doesn't work for you exactly, but you could probably adapt it if you're willing to try putting staples in those beautiful frames... my chair was a $20 goodwill special! IF you really wanted to do it somewhat permanently... here's a diagram to help explain what i'm about to say: i would try a thick layer of dacron batting cut a little wider than the frame of the chair to wrap around the top of the seat frame. i'd staple on each side JUST below the top of the frames along all 4 sides. (blue marks where i'd staple this layer) then i'd put another layer of that thick batting cut to the inside size of the frame and i'd just lay it on top of the first layer and not staple it anywhere. that'll give you a little extra padding just on the "seat" area. then i'd lay some muslin cut to just larger than the frame and staple all around just below where you stapled the batting. (yellow marks where i'd staple this layer) trim off all the excess fabric. then i'd lay your fabric of choice, staple it at the very bottom of the frame all the way around. (red marks where i'd staple) cover the staples with double welt or buy a coordinating trim or nailhead, but nail head trim has challenges of its own too! haha making the double welt SUCKS because i'm no good with a sewing machine, but it really does finish the project nicely. here's a pic of the stage of my chair where i had just the batting on top of the springs... here's after adding the white drapery lining fabric over the batting... an alternative is to ignore the springs that are there, and have a piece of wood cut to fit the top of the wood frame, then just add some batting and fabric, staple to the bottom of that board and set your board on your frame. you could screw in from the bottom if you wanted it attached permanently. i'm not sure if this helps or confuses you more, but i wish you lots of luck. the chair frames are so pretty!

What a beauty! Course even the ugly ones are beauties too, aren't they? So sorry for your loss. I hope at least that there's some comfort that she died doing what she enjoyed. I've always had an attraction to the gray cats. This one looks like it had a special personality too. Again, my condolences. It's so tough to lose a close friend.