Melissa, that is certainly food for thought. The original Duchesse is gone because over half of her died in the terribly hot summer last year. I've gotten a replacement band now which is growing nicely and hopefully will bloom this summer, but I'll certainly reserve judgment about it until it has at least another year under its belt. I wouldn't have discarded the original Duchesse if she had been able to tough it out. My new band is from Vintage and Gregg Lowery assured me after I posted above that his plants are from a very old specimen of DdB which is full-petaled and my band should have at least 25-30 petals, so I'm hopeful. It does make sense that an older plant would perform better. Certainly Westside Road Cream Tea's initial flowers looked nothing like the flowers it's putting out now, even in February. They're now about twice as large and 100% more shapely than the flowers I saw the first 6-8 months. Ingrid

Hi Annette, It sounds like you had a great day! I just planted a daisy like the one you found this summer, as one of my fill in the hole plants later in the season when the plants were going on sale. I live in Nebraska. In June, 2008, my DH and I went to the Outer Banks and Atlantic Beach in North Carolina. We had never seen an ocean, and I had been longing to for some time. It was so much fun! We went to Ocracoke, one of the islands by ferry. I just love the ocean, and look at the Avalon Piercam every day. One day, we may go west and drive the coast. I don't think we'll make it clear to Canada, though. Your post talking about the ferry and your island brought back memories of the vacation, and I Googled your island. I watched someone's vacation video on Youtube. You and Eris live in a beautiful area! I forgot the name of the garden the people went to, but it had an awesome waterfall. Have either of you been there before? Happy Gardening and Shopping, Sue

ttodd, if your trim has the decorative gimp edge it goes on the front and you could use fabric glue, actually. I do that in many instances instead of hand stitching. I don't want to see the stitching on the backside and it's usually on/or just next to the hemmed edge which is not good to machine sew through (well, that's me because I'm obsessed with the backside looking nice, too!). If the treatment might be cleaned later, fabric glue still works to hold in place and then hand stitch (no pins).

So you probably want a compact variety of olive. Arbosana, Arbequina, and Koroneiki are considered compact types. Arbosana isn't self fertile, but the other two are. If you are interested in paw paws, I'd also recommend looking at stark bros and hidden springs nursery. Hidden springs nursery sells them bare root, which is usually a big no no in paw paws, but they seem to take pretty good care of their trees, to give your tree a good chance of survival. On their website, they say their paw paws are container-grown. Their plants may be very small when you get them, about 12" or so. So, you will need to shade them for a year or two before allowing them access to full sun. Also, it's best to e-mail them with a list of what you want to order in advance, as they seem to sell out fast. Stark bros ships paw paws in square pots, but you have to be extra careful when taking them out to replant, as they have some tiny tiny hair-like roots that are easily damaged while pulling them out, to transplant. If you haven't heard the horror stories related to shipping and transplanting paw paws, then all you have to do is a quick google search.