Hee hee. this is why I'm just going for a ton of things -- if I lose some, oh well, no big deal. What I've done with some of them is prepped the container, sown the seeds, but have NOT watered them yet. So they are still "stalled". If you're worried about a warm spell, you could do something like this and just not water & not set the container where it can get rained into. Or just go for it, and know that some seeds will sprout and die...and the late sprouters in the same container might make up for them, just like they'd do in the wild. Last year I waited for the same reasons you mention. (still lost things to dry spells) This year I have to take advantage of the time off work over the holidays. Whenever you start sowing, don't think too hard about which things to sow first. Just sow until they're all sown! You can find homes for them later -- and if some don't make it, you'll still have enough for your garden.

wow, Rita, you still have lots of pretty blooms.Love that WILD CHERRY ROUNDUP and ENDURING FREEDOM,too.That big sunflower is really pretty.I use to grow them every year too,and squirrels would eat the seeds before I got a chance to injoy them,and they broke the stalks,too.Thaat NY ironweed looks to be very tall,but I love the color of it.Love Purple's.Your roses looks so healthy and nice, too.Deer ate mine up.I was spraying them to keep the deer from eating them,and all this rain washed it off and the deer was out eating them.They stripped all the leaves off and every bud and bloom,so now all I have in roses is bare canes.,except for a few I have inside a fenced front yard,and they look pitiful too. Jean

Island, someone on another board told me that damage is consistent with drought damage, which we were fairly dry last summer, The crapes with Indian names are generally the hardiest. I have Hopi, Sioux, Natchez, a forgotten one, and also Acoma, Victor. Acoma is probably the hardiest but a dwarf. Victor is supposed to be really hardy but died to the ground on me last year, but I also planted it very late. Natchez and the unknown one came back from the ground after my dog made fetching sticks out of them, but probably would have been wood hardy. Natchez is supposed to be one of the hardier ones as well. As far as where to get them. They are becoming pretty common here. Every big box has 2-4 types, as well as specialty nurseries, and if you stop at multiple Lowe's, etc..., they usually have different varieties. In my old sales job territory, I counted more than a dozen different varieties locally last year.

Thanks, Catherine. The backyard has been looking particularly lush - most things seem to be appreciating the cool spring we've had. We're now in a heat warning for the next few days so that won't make things too happy. All the lush growth is a bit worrisome - once Cole goes off the lawn, he totally disappears! If coyotes make it over the fences, we would not be able to see them.... Rouge - my Bowman's Root hasn't grown a lot in size but I like its delicate but wiry look. The flower shape sort of mimics the clematis beside it, and those hostas have nice almost white flowers in July so the Bowman's Root flowers fit that picture too. Here's a closer look at the BR Ruth - I have an 'Issai' beside the male. It's supposed to be self-fertile but fruit better with a male. I tried growing one elsewhere in the garden before but it languished - too much shade I think. This one is growing vigorously. I suspect, between the two, they will overwhelm the fence so I may be regretting this planting in another year or so! Oh well - nothing ventured, nothing gained... :-) One other picture I had meant to post - I gather tree peonies are grafted onto herbaceous peony roots. Any herbaceous growth is supposed to be removed I think. But I'm not overly fond of the tree peonies we have so I let the herbaceous growth remain to see what happened.... This is a really bad picture, but you can see that the tree peony flowers have finished, and the single pink herbaceous flowers are just fading. If the tree peony dies off, the herbaceous one looks worth keeping to me :-) (The dead stems on the hydrangea in front of the peony were removed after I took the picture!)