was just wondering if anyone have the following plants for trade: -Cissampelos pareira -Cocculus orbiculatus (Queen Coralbead)⨠or any other plants that can be made into herbal jell-o

guess not

If it was me I would do the altering before the dye job. I have done just that same alteration twice...couldn't get a cover in the size I needed and just bought the larger size and cut it down. Take it apart carefully so you can reconstruct it back like it was in the new altered size. I used the strip I cut off to trim a pair of white pillowcases which gave me an extra match up if needed. As for dying I'd ask at your local fabric shop where you do most of your fabric shopping and they could reccommend what dye to use and how to go about it. You might want to ask in a couple of places and just see which dye would be easier to work with. IMHO Budster

The simplistic explanation is called climate adaptation (among other labels) - the seeds Mother Nature planted had time to adapt to their environment and maybe 1 in 100 adapted and survived to germinate and of those maybe 1 in 50 live a normal life. The seeds we plant have had no such adaptation time and we plant far less seeds and expect near 100% germination of healthy long=lived plants. And we often get it simply because we waited when Mom didn't. Mother nature is really a lousy mother when it comes to taking care of her kids. She's the "Good Luck, Kid. You're on your own." kind of mother. But that really is overly -simplistic and much of the confusion results from mis-interpretation or mis-applicationof guidelines. For example: guidelines are written in broad generalities in the hopes of applying to most situations and to provide the best odds for success. So "Plants started too early outside will end up less vigorous than plants started when warmer." is referring to seeds direct seeded outdoors when warmer, not to transplants - seeds and transplants are two very different things - and is very true simply because the seedling once germinated under ideal conditions will be less stressed, less damaged, more healthy than the seed that germinates under less than ideal conditions. Plus the folks that write these guidelines know that we always want to rush the spring planting season - to our own detriment - so they say anything they can to try to slow us down. It seldom works. ;-) Dave