Jen, I can send cuttings of the plum. I have not tried to root them and was wondering if you had. I might try to root the Guthrie after it leafs out more. I can also send a bulb of the Eucommis. You can propagate Eucommis by carefully pulling a leaf off and planting the base of it in a small container of good potting soil. The leaf will gradually produce 2 small bulblets by the end of summer. I think Chickasaw Plums require 2 different plants to pollinate before they can fruit. The Indians had hundreds of cultivars, probably lost now. Does Cerinthe major grow easily for you? Mine keep dying. Mexican Petunia, dwarf pink is one I don't have. I'm waiting to see if Mirabilis longiflora comes back. It has smaller but very long stemmed white flowers with a fragrance similar to M.jalapa. I can swap you for a seed or two of Senna didymobotrya. I have Cassia or Senna hebecarpa, similar to C. marylandica. Have Salvia leucantha- Velvet Sage in two varieties. We may get seed of Sinocalycanthus this year. It had a few pods last year. Mike

Hello again! I wanted to get back to you all about a month after my original post with an update and another question about this plant. I do believe it is a hibiscus although it has never flowered in my care (5 years). As you may recall and see from the photos I submitted in February, it seem to be on its way out. I was distraught about this since it had been my mother's and in a way some of you may understand, I felt like I was letting her down by letting it die - and perhaps even causing its demise. So I set to work, following the suggestions given by you kind and knowledgeable folks. Here's what I did. I removed it from its pot and found a relatively small tangle of roots in rather wet soil. Now this was the same pot and soil it had been in at my mother's where it flourished. I was surprised that the root mass was not larger - it did not fill the pot, and I was surprised that it was so wet because there was plenty of drainage. Nonetheless, I removed most of the soil and repotted it in fresh, dry potting mix. It's actually a succulent mix because that's what i had. I hoped it would allow good drainage to keep the roots happy as I had been told that they don't like to be in cold wet soil. I also drilled extra holes in the pot and raised it up out of the saucer using several chopsticks so it would never sit in water. I gave it a small amount of water just to moisten the new surface but hoped the dry soil around the roots would wick away excess moisture. I also moved it closer to a heat source, right in front of a SW facing window. Of course I checked on it daily and after about a week stuck my finger in to see if the soil was still damp underneath. It was. So using a chopstick I poked around trying to gently churn it up a little. I figured it couldn't get any worse than it was. I was willing to experiment. Now, almost a month later, here are some photos. You'll see most of the leaves are completely dried up and many have fallen off. But there is one branch that still seems viable and I do believe I've even seen some new growth. The other day I noticed a small black flying insect flitting on the soil surface. I got out my insecticidal soap and sprayed the leaves and the soil surface. I don't know if it was a fruit fly from my compost bucket or something else but the plant hasn't gotten any worse. Now I am wondering if I should fertilize/feed it and if so, with what. Again, all opinions welcome - you guys really helped me out! Thanks.

The lily leaf beetles ate my tiger lilies to the ground a couple of years ago - I've got 4 little stunted ones left that I'm trying to save. In my vigilance I've found lily leaf larvae on potatoes, chinese lantern (physalis) and violets. I'm trying to eradicate the chinese lantern and violet and I'm half tempted to let the beetles do it for me but they'll just move on to something else. Saturday I had 2 generations of larvae working on the chinese lanterns - all lined up in a row munching away, disgusting but also made it easy to pull up the whole plant and dump it in a bucket of soapy water. If I'm feeling particularly vengeful I dump some alcohol in with the soap. Any success stories? Happy Gardening!

Wow, that's a lot of plants! I don't have a list of what I'm growing in my little gardens -- sometimes it takes me a couple of weeks in the spring to realize that that weird looking weed in the corner is something I've had for years. I just assume that more plants than not will grow in this area! One of the more unusual plants I grow is agapanthus. Not a particularly hardy variety, this was simply a florists' plant my mother gave me four years ago. But it's come up reliably every year for the past three seasons in Central Ohio. It's planted against a south-facing brick wall with excellent drainage, and apparently doesn't realize it's not in zone 8+ anymore! One of my mother's more spectacular plants is a 15 year old calamondin orange that arrived as a little "get-well" houseplant. It spends the winter on the unheated glassed in back porch in Cincinnati, and now stands over 6' tall in the pot, and is nearly 4' around. It always has flowers and fruit on it, and we've picked 200 ripe fruits at one time.