Melody Rose, I hope you see this. I tried to send you a message on your home page, but I don't think you have messaging enabled. Anyway, I tried to review what you want on your wish lists and am a little confused. Did you want both minis and Russians? I will try to put in the box what I think you will like because I am right ahead of you. I have Ness Ruffled Skies but it is a baby, so ask me after the RR is over and I will send you a leaf. I don't have Gillian but I have other whites, they are also quite small, so again, in a few weeks, ask me and I can send you a leaf. My plants are still recovering from winter. Joanne

hey, NHbabs, I saw pussy willows as we were coming out of a road west (?) of the library and Canterbury store last weekend. The sap is running in our area! Our granddaughters spent last Sunday night with us so I was cooking bacon and French toast at 5am. We have family dinner on Thursday nights and my family really likes me to make yeast rolls. This week it was Rita's Cornmeal Rolls. The recipe is on Epicurious. There is just a small amount of cornmeal so a person might not realize why the flavor is different. Since the recipe makes 32 rolls (crescent style) I put a bag in the freezer. Making a turkey and rice soup for a potluck meeting on Sunday. I finally started using the trick of pre-cooking the rice and adding it to the soup at the last minute if you make the soup ahead so the rice doesn't get overcooked. I'll add the rice to the slow cooker and hope it doesn't overcook during the meeting but I might just get up and add the rice before the buffet line opens. My sympathies to people south of us that got more snow this past week. I drove our granddaughters to school Monday morning and since the roads were a tiny bit slippery, I didn't go as fast as they thought I should. Had a warning light come on that I think meant some posi-traction came on. Also pulled over at one point to let the parade of commuters get by me. We made it to school on time because we allowed extra time. I have a recipe for maple glazed root vegetables I want to try. If I get to the farmer's market, I'll get some parsnips. It will be weeks before we can dig ours. Purple fingerling potatoes are starting to sprout. They taste fine but I can't get past the color. Any suggestions on what to do with them besides roast? They are supposed to contain a lot of phytonutrients.

Yes even here it's still an evolving situation. For example, I would now rank the damage on Ilex 'Scepter' as being more severe than that on 'Sand Pond'. Once again proving how a 100% American X American hybrid is more resistant to our capricious weather than an Asian X European one...as you'd expect. Because the leaves of 'Sand Pond' are obviously reviving themselves, but those of 'Scepter' continue to dessicate and turn papery brown. I wish I had a male I. integra, it would be cool to make a 'Sand Pond' X integra cross. (I should clarify versus what I said on Feb 23rd: some 'Scepter' leaves were still undamaged at that point. All 'Sand Pond' leaves had minor damage. Now, ALL 'Scepter' leaves are basically dead and some are already falling off. Most 'Sand Pond' leaves still have damage but the green bits are getting greener, it seems. The March 5 freeze was by far the most damaging of the winter) There's some rather odd damage now becoming apparent even on Abies ernestii...sometimes rated as hardy as 5b and I've seen a huge, beautiful one near Rochester, NY. (part of the reason I bought one) The leaves have little yellowish spots...I might post to the conifer forum to see if someone has seen anything like it. They are so subtle they might be impossible to photograph. It's like a very subtle variegation. Certainly not serious, but fascinating. All in all as they say, it still could have been worse. It also makes me feel good about my choice years ago not to invest in trying a big, expensive Trachycarpus palm. Because I thought north of about St. Michael's, MD or maybe Cape May, NJ - and even those locations are really really pushing it- they have no chance of being truly long term plants w/o protection. I knew another winter like 1994 would happen, and it did. What I did not know is we would have 2 in a row! I reiterate that 'Soquel' is my best looking Sequoia...granted it is my oldest but the bigger 'Swarthmore Hardy'/'Chapel Hill' has been in the ground a while, too, and arguably in a better spot. (better soil) Not that it is an appropriate rating, but I'm reminded of Dr. Dirr's former SEO website that rated 'Soquel' as zn 6 hardy. Not true but he apparently had some information about it surviving cold temperatures well, which it does. If you need to try one in the DC area, I'd now recommend that over any of the others. I want to try to see the huge tree in Silver Spring MD this spring, to see how it weathered things, and the 2 that are almost as big in NoVA. BTW - given that exposed Leylands were damaged even last winter in the outer suburbs of Baltimore, I definitely think most of New England would be stretching it for them.

pd728: I would (and I will) leave the feeders up until at least the end of September, and probably until close to frost. I'm still seeing hummers but when that's rare I'll take in the feeder from the deck and leave the feeder up in the front yard. The deck feeder will come in because the raccoons empty it every night and I have to refill it every morning. The front yard feeder only needs to be refilled every four or five days, depending on the weather. Claire edit note: I just saw this site The amazing tongue of the hummingbird