Hi BonniRose, Welcome to GardenWeb! Just for your information, when someone posts to a thread the original poster will usually email them directly, if you haven't heard back from the other traders it's probably because they haven't been back to this forum and seen your follow ups and are waiting for emails from you. I hope you enjoy it here, have fun trading! Jeanne

I did heat it,I don't believe it ever dropped below 14F-that was not my plan originally(keeping it that warm)but I planted the Agaves and some other cactus in Dec,so, I decided to keep it a little warmer to protect them.I had to remove the front half over the cactus in mid March as we had some early 70F weather and the temp went up to 100F in there! to much stress on them,it also may explain why the cactus are budding so early,although quite a few normally flower in June.

I received a surprise today from Chris (grolikecrazy)! Thank you. :) The plain letter envelope had holes in it- looks like it was damaged in transit. There was no bubble wrap or other padding inside of it to cushion the seeds. Seeds sent to me with no bubbles almost always do get destroyed like this, because the PO runs mail through some hard metal rollers unless it's in a bubble mailer marked FRAGILE in big red letters. :( The Dianthus barbatus seeds were about 75% destroyed and the Red Noodle Yard Long Bean seeds were completely dust. Thank you grolikecrazy, for kindly sending to me. I can still sow the few Dianthus seeds that made it, and hopefully get some plants! Excited about that. :) I'm sorry this happened, Chris. You were so kind to send seeds to me. I'm very glad you were thinking of me, and some of the Dianthus seeds do appear to be usable. It made my day to receive this, even if it is just a few seeds. : ) Thanks, Grovespirit Wondering why the surprises I mailed out haven't shown up here yet. I do hope they didn't get lost in the mail.

I have a Jewish cook book that has lots of middle eastern recipes in it. It's 'The Book of Jewish Food' by Claudia Roden. It has lots of Sephardi recipes. In this book Harissa is used a lot. It's a spicy red pepper paste. One dressing for boiled vegetables calls for: 4-5 tablespoons olive oil Juice of 1 lemon 1 teaspoon harissa (or 1 tsp paprika and a good pinch of cayenne 1 teaspoon ground caraway 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander I've used variations of this dressing for all sorts of vegetables. I never use the caraway. Sometimes I add garlic or cilantro, etc. To make Harissa you basically just take 1/2 pound of dried red chile peppers. I use a mix of the little bird peppers, ancho, new mexico, etc. Remove stems and seeds, boil in water until soft. Drain and put in food processor with a head of peeled garlic cloves and 1 tablespoon salt. Add water as necessary while in the FP. The recipe also calls for 1 tablespoon each of ground coriander and caraway. I leave those out so my paste can be combined with whatever flavors I want later on. I usually add a bit of olive oil as it seems to help the texture. I also push it through a sieve to remove any tough skins from the peppers. Did you have this at a restaurant?