I've always heard that gardening is very therapeutic for just about whatever ails you. So, enjoy, and enjoy some more!!! :) As for which part is seed, generally, once you get more experience collecting them, you can tell pretty much right away which part is seed most of the time (there are some annoyingly hard to tell exceptions, not to mention the really tiny ones). The first thing you should look for is what's left after the flower fades away. Ideally (and true for most, but apparently not all plants), you should wait until the flower head dries. That ensures that the seeds are ripe enough. Also, not all flowers end up producing seeds: Some can self-pollinate, some go so far as needing a "male" plant, while others are just really finicky about pollination. Seeds are generally made for delivering genetic material, so they often are rather tough, or have some tough parts where genetic material is (but not always - lily-family seeds, like lilies, tulips, etc. are flimsy all over), and often have some way to spread themselves (wings, fluffy materials, hooks, etc.). They are also almost always visually identical (sometimes not quite identical, but you can tell they are the same kind of objects - cyclamen seeds are irregularly shaped, but they are all irregularly shaped the same general way, and are otherwise nearly identical in appearance), so when you look at the chaff, solid, repeated patterns is something you can look for. For example, I collected some Campanula seeds one time, and there were lots of reddish, shiny tiny bits that came out, which were obviously the seeds. Some aren't so identical, though. Calendula can vary a bit, but you can always tell from the C-shape and the rough part on the outside of the seed that it's the seed you're looking for. Seeds are also generally tan to brown, to black in colour (again, with exceptions - some are very white, some are annoyingly green). Some plants have pods (irises, lilies, peas, etc.), sometimes seed heads (asters and daisies, some grasses, etc., sometimes something else. Experience with which is which helps, and it helps if you can compare it with seeds you know. Knowing the plant families help too. Composites (asters, daisies, sunflowers, etc.) always have their seeds at the bottom of some fluff, or leftover flower bits, or sometimes nothing at all, and always stuck to the base of the flower. Sometimes they are tiny, sometimes huge, but they are always stick-shaped in some way, sometimes real stick-like things (often with ribbing), sometimes wider and fatter, but the general shape is always the same. Mints, and family (salvias, lamb's ears, lamium, lavender, etc.) always form their seeds at the bottom of the calyx (the green "cup" at the bottom of the flower, which remains after the flower goes away), four per calyx, which you can see if you look down one. When ripe, they are usually dark brown to black (sometimes with contrasting patterns), cigar-shaped (like lavenders) to spheres (many sages). Peas have dangling pods with spherical (well, pea-shaped) seeds. Lilies (including tulips, Lilies of the Nile, grape hyacinths, etc.) and the closely-related irises, usually have upright pods (sometimes elongated, sometimes spherical), which open from the top when ready. Unfortunately, some families are wildly different in appearance, so keep looking and get experience. One thing that all seeds do have in common (unfortunately many are too tiny to be able to see) is the part where it used to be attached to the mother plant with, looking like a circular cut, like the circular thing that's left when you pull a grape from the stem, but usually smaller. That's where the roots would eventually come out from. I won't bother to tell you about fruits, because usually the seeds in them are easy to identify, as are the fruits. As for sowing, mostly read up about them on the net or in books, because their requirements can vary very much. However, if they are perennial where you are, you can bet that giving them a cold period never hurts (even some annuals). Try wintersowing. Some also need light, though, like columbines, and some need dark, like cyclamens, so you still need to research which is which. Some also take extra long to germinate, so you also need patience. Columbines, I find, can take a month, many composites take only a day or two, usually in warm, and some, like trilliums, can take up to two years or so. It never hurts to ask here, of course... :) As to how do you know it's viable, well, you generally don't until you try it. First hand, if the seeds are unusually bendable (works with composites and many others, but not lilies, as they are bendable to begin with), they are probably not viable. The floating method, I've read, doesn't work with most seeds, and not even always with the ones they usually work with. Reading up can also tell you how long you can store the seeds (evening primroses last pretty much forever, violets don't usually last too long), but, again, doesn't hurt to try. I've had hellebores germinate after two years of storage (but with very low rate - about three in 220 seeds), as well as corydalis (one out of twenty), both very short-lived seeds. So don't despair. Unless you need hundreds of them, it never hurts to give them a try. Giving them a cold period often helps to coax old seeds to germinate too. Oh, yes, and some will flower the first year, some the second, and some won't flower for three or four years. I just had some trilliums germinate (the hardest seeds I've ever tried so far), which gave me a lot of happiness and surprise, but I know they take at least four years to flower. Oh, well. So, here's the crash course. I hope this helps and is not too confusing. Again, good luck, and, above all, have fun with it all!!! And challenge yourself with other methods - baggie, wintersowing, GA-3 (a natural growth hormone required by a few plants, hated by some others), smoke treatment (liquid smoke you use for cooking supposedly works with plants that need smoke, which is very rare). GOod luck!!

"Gardners Diary" will return to HGTV starting every Thursday in April. Below message sent to me after emailing several weeks ago to ask about this series. Hello and thank you for your email. First, please accept our sincerest apology for the lengthy delay in getting back to you with a response. We've been experiencing intermittent mail server issues of late which has caused a significant delay in getting back to our customers. HGTV has always been dedicated to offering its audience the best in Gardening / Landscaping programing. Although a number of our programs in this category have been on hiatus, we're happy to inform you that Gardener's Diary will be returning to our programming line-up in April. The show will be airing on Thursday's at 7:00am ET/PT. Also, new episodes of Gardening By the Yard with our "Gardening Guy," Paul James are expected to air during 2008.

Just pick it up. There's no reason not to. I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that, for example, if you were getting sued ignoring the letter just delays the inevitable. There will be a process server lurking in the bushes before long anyway. If it is just some kind of notice from the quarry, it seems to me that you'd want to know what they had to say. There may be some situation where the quarry is required to notify the residents. Remember that certified mail provides proof of mailing along with proof of delivery. The quarry may be able to say, "Hey, we mailed them all notification. Here's the receipts. It's not our fault they never picked them up." Or could be completely trivial, like a collection notice for a previous occupant.

Fun2BHere, it is also decorated for the Thanksgiving feast, the Easter egg hunt, Christmas and late summer (maybe Labor Day) all in one room. There are Thanksgiving cranberries with a bird feasting on their skins; there are Easter lilies on the sideboard; there are late summer hydrangeas in the same vase; there are evergreen magnolias hanging like bunting with lights in various places. It is a holiday smorgasbord.